Your Customer support stories...

[Bublehead]

If you hate long boring posts, let me stop you right now and save you 15 minutes otherwise enjoy this little tale...

Back in the days before the internet and all the amalgamaters and set busters, my personal advice to myself was always buy sets for their parts first, how cool they are second.  You kept track of all new parts and elements and when sets would come out with a brand new element, you had to decide how many of these elements you may need in the future, then purchase the smallest number of sets with the largest piece count of that element.  Biggest gripe I had was when they would put out a new part but it is only available in a very large set and the number of new elements per set was one. Yes , a single copy of the new part out of a cast of hundreds of others... sort of like the orange wavy catch element 6227330 from the Bugatti, (but at least they give you two). Back then, if you wanted multiple parts without breaking the bank, your only real option was contacting Lego customer service and claim you were missing the part from the set, or that you had broken the part and needed a new one.  This deception was good for a couple of parts but what if you needed a LOT of parts? There was a car MOC my brother built that used a double differential, twin motor drive system that provided an infinitely variable output.  He went through almost every 14 tooth thin bevel 4143 gear I had, splitting them in two, trying to transfer too much torque in his transmission.  This was before we had the white slip clutched 24z gear.  I ended up having to call customer service in Enfield Connecticut and explain how my brother had busted all of my gears and I needed to replace them all. She said how many do you need? And she was just a little incredulous when I said well, I don’t have a exact count of how many I owned, but then I started listing off all the sets I owned and how many gears were in each set and that my brother had broken all but 6 of them and did the quick math and finally said “Well, if you send me a couple hundred, that should do it.” Silence on the other end of the line... then  “Did you say a couple of hundred?” And I said, well I expect he will break at least another 100 before he gets done, so... yeah a couple hundred should work just fine... oh, and I will pay for them, whats say 10 cents a piece ought to do it, no?” More silence...  Then-   “Ok, sir, your parts should be in the mail tomorrow, at least as many as  we have on hand here right now. Not sure we have 200 of those in our spare parts inventory but I will try and send you as many as we have available.” I thanked her, hung up, and then waited patiently and about a week later a small box shows up, inside, in a little little ziplock bag, was 200 brand new bevel gears and a note from Susan Williams, thank you for your patronage and support of the Techic Lego Brand, no charge (this time).  Now the sad part about this story was not that I had to lie to her to get the 200 bevel gears, or that I lied about how many I owned, but that this was all true. My brother did break all my gears and I really needed to replace them.  Now, A day later, my brother rebuilds the MOC and adds a torque release module that uses the friction of 4 studs to keep an idler shaft in place that would kick out when torque reached gear splitting levels.  I asked him why it took the lives of 200 bevel gears before he engineered the release module and his reply was, “well you had 200 of them! When I got down to the last 6 gears I was using, I had to do something to prevent one of them from breaking.” <Face Palm> So 194 gears died a tragic death all because I had them to kill. 

Edited September 23, 2018 by Bublehead
Typo

[deraven]

OK... I was mildly annoyed at first, then a little bored (you did warn us), but then enjoyed the highly amusing payoff there at the end.  It all leads us back to the classic "necessity is the mother of invention."  

[MxWinters]

Oh man, that sucks, I hope you've banned your brother from touching your collection. Still, good on Susan for great service .
This is a reason I don't let anyone touch any of my LEGO, not even for a quick test drive, I consider my LEGO collection too valuable, both sentimentally and monetary.
The other day, I had my lorry in my Mum's car to show her and my Dad some changes I'd made. When they dropped me back home, I found the front axle/steering system was all broken and I had to rebuild it, luckily it only took a couple of minutes to fix. My dad carelessly dropped a heavy bag on the top of the cab, crushing the axle. If this kinda thing happens when I show someone my model, no chance Ill let someone touch my full collection. Free feel to call me overly protective, I won't ever deny it .

[Milan]

Moving this to General Forum.

[Johnny1360]

My rather lackluster customer support story. I have only been buying LEGO for about 2.5 years and only have about 300 plus sets. I have only had to deal with CS once, the Saturn V Rocket had one extra 2x6 bow plate white and was short 1 2x6 bow plate black. Told the nice lady and 3 weeks later got my black bow plate in the mail, no questions asked and promptly delivered. My one and only dealing with CS turned out well and since I had an extra bow plate in my spare parts bin, I didn't have to wait to complete the set. 

[Peppermint_M]

Here is a fun one, it isn't mine, it is my brother-in-law's. 

He bought the Ghostbusters Firehouse HQ. Settled down to build it. After about a certain point he noticed a strange gap appearing in the wall, it got a little worse as he built. Now, I live down the street from my sister and her husband and pop by quite regularly, in fact that day I was simply at home. My sister told her husband to message me and maybe send a photo to see if I could help with the problem. 

But no.

He had to call CS and explain this issue. At the time, the HQ was brand new in stores. He had bought it on release day. So reporting a problem like this mystery "gap" in the wall sent everyone into a spin at Customer Services. After all, this could be a major problem. 

In the meantime, I heard about the "issue" from my sister. I know he is something of a sloppy builder, not lining the bricks up very carefully. So I pointed out that the slight misalignment could cause problems with tall walls. And thus the problem that caused something of a CS panic was solved.