Vee

I just gave him a neutral feedback. I expect him to "retaliate" because he has not posted his feedback yet (and sellers, be them in ebay or in BL, will more and more often not post feedback first so that they can "retaliate" if needed). If he retaliates, I will never buy from him again. If he is honest and gives me a positive (after all he made the mistake and I will pay the price of it), he will continue in my whitelist. @Andy: you are right, I have just learned this. Next time I order all the remaining stock of a seller, I will either ask the seller if he or she did indeed have them all or order a few more from other vendors.

No. He did not send me the missing pieces and I had explicitly asked him that I wanted the parts, not a refund. He simply answered by telling that there was an oversight and sent the refund without any other interaction. IMO, he knew from the beginning that he didn't have all the pieces but kept quiet until I complained. Not nice.

For me, this event may prove two things: - TLG is a mess, OR - Lego employees are also human beings, just like us...

I ordered 23 new tiles from a seller. He had the very best price and these were his last 23 tiles of the color. Along with this order, I had a second order, from another seller, and from this other seller I ordered the 24th tile of same color. I need 24 tiles. Both orders had lots of other stuff in them, not only the tiles. Now, the package from seller 1 arrived and it has 20 tiles, not 23. I write to the seller and ask him to send me the 3 missing tiles. He, only then, writes back and says that there was an "oversight" and then he sends me a refund and a "sorry for the inconvenience". No 3 missing tiles. Now I need to order the 3 missing tiles from some other seller, pay new shipping, wait for the order... Would you give a positive feedback for this seller?

Yes, I have. Since I have bricks to make the roof all red or almost all dark red (the very top roof bricks don't exist all in dark red so I chose black to go with the dark red), I have tried, in LDD, many combinations, and scattered was one of them, since I like what was done in 31012. But of all my ideas, the one that looked better for me in LDD was this one, the stripe of red with two layers at the level of the windows. To really know in reality which one would be best, I'd have to try them all for real, but it is too much trouble for now, so I stuck with the stripe. I really am not sure what to do, I just don't want the roof all red neither all dark red. I will have to disassemble at least partially the roof later and then I will try some new combinations. I didn't like the way the front door is connected to the rest of the house. If you look closely, there is a very noticeable gap between two of the roof tiles, right on top of the front door, and the loose connection there is to blame. I have devised a modification, adding more 1x2 plates with one stud in the center, shifting the roof tiles, to try to make the connections better, but since I don't have the parts, I can't do it now. When I have them, I will then have to disassemble the roof to get to that part.

Front yard is done. That little guy in front of the house is its owner, Ole Kirk himself! Don't ask me how Mr. Christiansen gets in and out of his house through those so narrow doors... My little Denmark flag, born from another thread here, ended up on top of the house. Side door view. The other side, complete view. Final top view. Next, back yard. But this will take more time, it is a little more "complex" since I have a bigger area.

House is ready. I have bricks to make the roof entirely red or entirely dark red. I chose some mix. Since I don't have the sticker, I added a Lego logo. Another view. You can see the tip of the axle that turns on the light inside. Pushing the button! The light does not illuminate much because the house is low so no room for the light to spread. But it has its coolness, it brings shine to the transparent plates that are part of the fixed doors. Next step is to do the front yard,

That is the only way I believe it happened. For a few minutes, for the last two or one in stock! A very strange business practice.

This is from yesterday, the OKH at the end of Book 1. The Lego newspaper is all the interior the house will ever have! I was supposed to have finished the house and then started the surroundings, but I am having a bit of a problem with the addition of a light brick. The mechanism to push the button of the light brick was supposed to work but after I added the rest of the roof, friction between the parts, that I was not counting on, made it stop working so I am reviewing it. Here is the mechanism _before_ I found it does not work well. While building this house I realized why Lego never made an official (available to the public) set out of it and maybe never will. This house uses some techniques that I am sure would not pass quality standards of today. Some things are not well interlocked. I know, or believe, that this house, as it is, is a faithful copy of the house built by Ole Kirk decades ago. Back then, probably Ole Kirk didn't have all the parts that we do now, so he had to use whatever he had available and at hand. As a piece of Lego history, it is a very interesting and unique house though. I have changed slightly a couple of things to try and reinforce some parts, even if just a little bit.

I noticed the same thing, commented here, but people say these prices did happen. With all due respect, I don't believe it. For me there is a bug in the website. Some of them may have happened, but not all.

A final follow-up on this thread. The parts arrived and I was able to assemble the solution and test it "in loco". It worked great. Thank you, TwentyLeggedHen, your help was fundamental! Here is the final solution in LDD format.

I think we agree in something now, but I am no further than 2 standard deviations from the mean.

Maybe your reasoning makes sense for some customers, but probably not for others like me. I can't understand the benefit, under my point of view, under the point of view of someone that wants to buy a Lego set (otherwise, why would I visit the website?), to find in Lego website sets that I cannot buy. I understand that by seeing some sold out sets, I may be interested in something similar but chances are higher that I will get upset because, since I have seen it, now I have the desire to have it, but I can't, and what if I cannot find anything similar that is not sold out? If I had not seen it, I would not be wanting it, then I would probably be happy with something else. You know, out of sight, out of mind! You said that " ... the absolute worst thing a merchant or manufacturer can typically do is make something just simply disappear..." but I would say that the worst thing is to make the product become a ghost, something that you can see but you can't touch. The one thing that Lego does that I think is fair and thoughtful is to label the products that are about to retire with the "Retiring Soon" status. But, since they don't do this for all products, some vanish without previous notice, then the fairness and wisdom of the idea also disappears, because you know that you cannot trust that Lego will always mark the retiring products as such. If you can't trust for some, you cannot trust for anyone because you never know... It should be phases. For sale, out of stock (still for sale, just be patient), retiring soon (still for sale but you'd better buy it now or never) and sold out (never again for sale), then sold out status should go away after, let's say, a couple of weeks. Then, if you look for some set that was supposed to be there and is no more, you know that it is gone for good.

Honestly, it doesn't for me. I have a very simple mind. For me, if the item is sold out and chances of it coming back are slim - and it _is_ slim! - the item should be removed from customers eyes, period. If the item happens to come back one day, put it again in the website for sale. Leaving the sold out items in sight for so long is, at the least, disrespectful to the customer (to _this_ customer here, at least). Why do I want to know what WAS available for sale at retail price if it is not anymore? Consider that there are now thousands of Lego sets that once existed and exist no more in Lego store so it is not a few of them being shown in their website that is going to help, even if they are the most recent ones.. If I want to know what were the sets that once existed and were available, I never go to Lego website, I go to brickset, google, etc. Worst: what is the use of letting customer know that a set that is not available anymore at retail price one, for some unknown period of time, was on sale for a much cheaper price? Why do I want to know this? To get upset because I was not one of those that was able to buy the set at such lower price? Again, disrespectful. Whatever information they have about the item, if they set the status as sold out, it is sold out. Hide it. If ever it comes back, show it. It is that simple for me. Anyway, thank you for your thoughts, everyone has the right to have their own opinion. Mine just doesn't change, despite all that has been written here.

And the OK's House is taking shape... My "everything room", currently acting as a "Lego room" to build OKH..

I had chosen Reddish Brown for the color of the walls, instead of the original red. I even bought all the necessary parts. But what I always wanted really was Dark Orange. After some thinking, I decided to go for the dark orange. But some needed parts do not exist in dk. orange, a few are too expensive, so this is what I got: As you can see, some parts were kept reddish brown. Tile 1x6, tile 1x1, brick headlight, cheese slope, 3x3 corner plate, all these parts do not exist in dk. orange, so they were kept red. brown. The plate 1x1 exists in dk. orange but its price is prohibitive, so my solution was to use red. brown where they could not be replaced by something else. Above a little problem. The color of the dk. orange bricks don't exactly match with each other. You can see two more 1x1 plates that I could not avoid. The bricks that hold the back door used a few 1x1 plates too, just like the front door, but I rearranged things and was able to get rid of them by using 1x2 plates. Same happened to bricks that hold the side door, no red. brown in that side and no variations in dk. orange color (I guess the 1x4 bricks are to blame...). Detail: the light bley 1x3 tile shown here originally is a 1x1 tile + 1x2 tile. I guess Ole Kirk didn't have a 1x3 back then... All the doors are originally all red. brown; I am using tan (with a detail in dk. tan for the front door).

I am very biased towards houses and buildings. And I am a Lego fan! So when I saw for the first time Ole Kirk's House, a Lego house with a bit of a Lego history, I was frustrated that I could not buy it. Because it was an exclusive gift to Lego's employees (and also to some tour participants), the current asking price is too high and I thought that buying an original new set was not worthy, considering that the house uses mostly common parts, so I decided to BrickLink it. The only serious part that makes all the difference is the sticker, and it is a cool sticker! Well, no sticker for me then. Since I was going to BL it, it was a non-original house from the start, I thought, what the heck, if I am BL'ing it, I will then make it a little more to my taste, meaning, I will not make it all red. That too much red always bothered me. So I decided to change the bricks from red to some other color (if you look at pictures of the original real house that inspired 4000007, you see that the external wall, made of real bricks, obviously do not have the same color as the roof). Soon I decided to change the color of the roof too because I don't like very much bright red roofs. Then, by choosing some not-so common colors, some bricks were either nonexistent or too expensive, so I had to make some minor modifications to the structure of the house, like replacing a 2x8 brick with two 2x4 bricks, so on, but always maintaining its overall structure as original as possible. I started to buy the parts for the house more than one month ago but unfortunately, one of the BL sellers, the main one that I used for this project, took weeks to ship my order, so only recently I had all the parts to finally start building it. And in the meantime, while I waited for the parts, I kept creating more and more stuff to enhance the house, mostly a landscape around it. In this thread I plan on showing pictures of my build. Since I am slow to build, it will take time for me to have the house completed. So, as a start, I show you the one picture below. The base of the house! You can see some differences already from the original. I am using a 32x32 green baseplate so I can have more area to the back of the house for some landscape; the original set uses 3 dark bley baseplates that are equivalent to an area of 32x24. I decided on a green baseplate because I wanted the house surrounded by green, not dark bley; but then, the inside of the house becomes also green, which is not good; that is why I covered all the inside with dark bley tiles, to keep the inside look of the house similar to the original one. Some adaptations already in the black 1xN plates; I had to "break" the black plates into smaller pieces because on top of them there will be smaller bricks. There will be nothing inside the house, just like the original,. Maybe in the future I will add something, but chances are slim. Too much money already spent on the tiles... More pictures will come as I build it, but again, I am slow to do my things, very very...

And my table is as reliable as LDD Manager is since it uses solely the conversions from LDD Manager. One thing that I don't understand well is why BrickLink/Peeron/WhateverElse use color names that don't match Lego's. No matter how weirdly Lego names its colors, one should stick to the official names, firstly to avoid confusion and secondly because they are the official names. Why have alternate names? I agree that "Tan" is a much better name and truer to the color than Brick Yellow but it doesn't matter, Lego chose Brick Yellow then Brick Yellow it should always be, etc.

Uhmmm, what can I say... well, I just love my signature...

From all the sets you mentioned, the Japanese set was the only one that I supported. Beautiful! I root for it.

You guys need to stop calling the 1x1 slopes "cheese", this makes me hungry! Ok, makes sense now, thx for the explanation.

That's interesting, a mold that has the whole thing in it. I always thought of a mold as producing only the same parts, one mold = one part. Uhmmm, but then all the parts have to have the same color?

I found the problem. It was my flashblocker extension. Although it was set to not block anything from lego websites and it always worked correctly, I guess some automatic update changed something and, even set to not block Lego, it was causing the PAB to not work. I disabled it and PAB started working fine.

That is the problem. It is easy for Lego to produce a new color, then they produce it for a few parts for a new set, then they reuse this color a few times with other sets, then they retire the color or the theme that used it and the color will rarely be used again. So the table of colors keeps growing, making us believe we have this so many colors to choose from, but we have not. Only a few parts were produced in a given color and they become expensive in BrickLink. PAB, for instance, has a very very very limited choice of colors. Only the most basic colors have enough parts to be useful. Example: headlight brick 1x1 (4070), I needed it in dark orange, it does not exist, according to BL, I wanted the very common 1x1 slope (54200) also in dark orange, it does not exist. I wanted the very common 1x1 plate (3024), also in dark orange, it does exist but it is so rare that its price is prohibitive, it is the same as not existing for me.

Yw, King. My table only lists colors found in LDD while Peeron's lists also retired colors. Since we can find retired colors in BL, this is useful. And yes, the number of colors is amazing but it is also amazing that despite Lego producing so many colors, only a few are really more useful since you can't find interesting parts in many of these colors or, if you can find in some, they will be considered "rare" for the bricks you want and will have prohibitive prices.