Itaria No Shintaku

That is why I used the word "ransom". Picture this case my friend. I want to ransom all your pieces. Then I buy ALL your shop with a bogus account. What happens? You understand this is a bogus order, and you cancel my order. This leaves me open the chance to give you a negative. Oh, you will retaliate for sure but why should I bother if that's a bogus account? And what if you don't cancel the order instantly? You can start a NPB only a week after the order date. Then I have a week more to pay. And what if I reply to the NPB? I gain an extra week. Making your whole shop at ransom for 21 days. And I can repeat this practice every 21 days. That is quite enough to ruin someone's business.

Apart from the very fact that it's not responsive and this is quite a titanic problem, yes. Uploading parts may lead in problems like: Random Error 500 (Internal Server Error). It's not you, it's us. This little guy with a garbage bin on his head greeting you), which means that if you don't cache data whatever operation you just made, well you have to redo it. And that means that if you visualize 100 elements per page and you did 100 changes you have to redo. Them. All. Random Error "Possibly someone just bought the parts you listed" (which is never the case). Some updates fail for no actual reasons and spawns this error. To be honest, this happen much less frequently than the 500 one. These are errors from the system. Plus you have human errors.

Can I kindly ask someone educated to explain me why TLG's acquisition of Bricklink is as I read a disaster or terrible news or worst scenario ever? Because I do not understand this stance. Let's consider some facts: BRICKLINK DOESN'T WORK PROPERLY, IT'S FULL OF BUGS, IT'S NEARLY INACESSIBLE FROM MOBILE While we agree that TLG doesn't seem the best company in regard of mantaining websites, Bricklink is so broken that even a company not that good would only make us benefit from some iintervent. BRICKLINK HAS NO CURRENT WORKING HELP DESK While I can agree that TLG isn't good at website, perhaps their help desk is the better I've ever experienced (and you also know that is true since they keep on shipping expensive envelopes for maybe 1 lost part all over the world for free) BRICLINK HAS NEVER REFORMED THE FEEDBACK SYSTEM Which isn't working. People can virtually ransom your shop out of a negative feedback. (1 - make a bogus profile and place a very big order that you won't pay making all those pieces unbuyable for being sold to other people 2 - once upon order cancellation, you can still leave a negative feedback. 3 - repeat) BRICKLINK'S DATA ON AVERAGE PRICES CAN BE EASILY SPOILERED Within a policy that "everybody can make his own price", I can put a part in two lots, one at a low price, one at an incredibly high price (that I don't care to sell at) that will influence the future sales of people using the automated funcion "average price for sale" for part-outs making it sometimes pretty futile. This has been discussed so many times on the forum, but nothing has ever been made to fix that (like using a different average function, or a customizable one). BRICKLINK RARELY (if never) HANDLES INCORRECT ITEM LISTING People listing sets as "complete" when missing parts just in order to avoid it disappearing when you make a research upon complete sets only. You can report them, but seldom they will be removed/listed correcty after the report. INTERNET HISTORY IS FULL OF EXAMPLES IN WHICH PEOPLE ABANDONS A TECHNOLOGY IN FAVOUR OF ANOTHER BECAUSE PEOPLE MOVE I remember having used ICQ, IRCnet, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and Skype. That was before because people were all on one platform, then they had several reasons to move and when all the people you want to get in touch with are on another platform, you move too. It has never been distastrous or terrible news. It's simply called "moving on". Wheter bricklink is severely reformed, or abandoned by AFOLs, you will however need to rebase your knowledge from scratch. What makes a difference? The only way you wouldn't have to re-learn is if they keep bricklink as it is now. Which, being itself not a change, cannot be a bad news. TLG SEEMS PERCEIVED AS EVIL This is something that I honestly always fail to see. Why are there some AFOLs who hate TLG? This may be little off topic, but I always fail to see that. Yes, in the announce and interviews they surely have been compelled to reinsure AFOLs that they are doing our good. But why should be them compelled to? Why should AFOLs need to be reinsured? Isn't TLG the one producing the stuff we love to play with? Isn't TLG so our bigger benefactor, giving us every year fresh material to play with, providing LUGs with free stuff (they are not compelled to), shipping you pieces that you may have not found in boxes for free (they are not compelled to), making special prices for their stuff if you are in a LUG with at least two different projects (they are not compelled to), having an entire plaftorm in which you can have the dream of your set becoming real (they are, again, not compelled to), and in the meantime trying to be ethical devolving part of their income to the LEGO Foundation (they are not compelled to) and spending a lot of money in research for eco friendly plastic? In comparison to all the rest of the Toy companies, to me TLG seems a whole different world. I don't see Mattel or Hasbro doing nothing even comparable. Still people perceive TLG as an evil company and post all over the internet the picture with the LEGO shark eating the bricklink fish. I'm not a newbie. I can say I had no dark age and I spent a lot of my free time discussing with AFOLs. So it's not something I don't want to see. It's just reality, some people seem to secretly (or not so secretly) hate TLG for whatever reason. I have some suspects, like, many of these AFOLs are angry at TLG because they are biased, many other may be angry at TLG because they think TLG owes them one, for whichever reason. Like, TLG isn't making the sets they love. Or TLG isn't re-releasing the damn goats. Or the sets are too expensive for their own perception. Everyone of this people seems to know better than TLG what TLG should be doing, without having the big picture TLG has. Sorry for being this long, that was not my initial idea, but I really had an itch to scratch.

If you think that selling Ice in Iceland is not a small market but a market yet to be discovered, you are super optimistic.

No, sir. That's even greater evidence. Many people who got even 2 orders per day suddenly went down to 0 per day for a couple / 3 months. In the same time, many people noticed an increase of their average orders. They did something and they knew they were playing with other people's money so they simply pretended nothing happened. But why in the world the forum was plenty of messages of people experiencing the very same problem, in the very same period, in the very same way?

Yes they have. They wrote it in a note they sent to the Ambassadors this year. They do special runs for this very purpose. Still TLG can put on individual items "This item is intended for adults and not for kids". It's easy, no particular stress, and effective. - I am a little curious, I read all the comments and I didn't find a single comment blaming bricklink for this choice. Business are made within two parts. They are both responsible. If this acquirement is this much evil as someone is depicting it, the misdeed is being carried by both sides. On my behalf, I think TLG is the lesser to be blamed here. When the Jezek family sold bricklink, it became something uglier and careless. I still remember that there have been 3 months in which the forum was full with people complaining that they weren't receiving any more orders point-blank, and they had a normal average just before (and they had also after) that period. I was one of them. I usually got my 3-per-week orders and I was really frustrated to discover that (if I recall correctly) from May 2017 to July 2017 I didn't receive a single order that I didn't ask for (like, telling a friend I was making a special discount for him). Bricklink never told us the truth. They said that nothing special happened, but we customers aren't stupid. Three months without a single order? Many people all togheter point-blank? Come on! Not to mention all the rest. Errors all over. No replies from the help desk. A clear intent to sell everything. If this (and I don't think so) cession is the biggest misdeed happened in the AFOL era (as most are depicting), you have two parts to blame, and TLG is the lesser. My 2 cents of course.

Whatever, still the point is that the copycats are no Robin Hood, they are Al Capone. Probably they just "went too far" sometimes and they regret it. Not that a ghost revolver is the case, probably the Tommy Gun is only when coupled with a non fictional character. Or, they can make adults sets, like Stranger Things, where they allow more than usual. Since bricklink is a plaftorm for adults, there will be no kids buying smoking supplies or wine. Maybe they will just put a disclaimer on that very object and that's it. I wouldn't certainly disapprove that behaviour.

It's not about guns. If it was about them, a revolver or a tommy gun would count as much as a sword. They are always weapon. It's TLG not wanting to do modern warfare. Actually a tommy gun cannot be considered modern warfare, it's something of more than 100 years ago.

Advertisement for a product is money you pay. Lepin & Co. do not pay a single cent, yet they benefit. TLG advertised set XXXXXX, Lepin did the same paratising the ad that TLG paid for. Defending the copycats always wrong. There is no valid reason for defending them. Never.

Actually that's a bit different. We get back to the 2000's. Some items were found not to be in the actual bricklink catalog. I myself had a sticker that wasn't in the catalog though having LEGO original ID and number. "Custom Item" was a function added allowing people to enlist stuff that was not in the catalog. Then it spreaded into every possible form and nobody did anything to prevent that. That's the way you could sell brickarms, printed torsos, printed shields, items with factory defects like misprints, miscolors, custom sails, whatever. Brickarms has simply received a special treatment. It was a political/economical choice I didn't support. One thing is to allow anything non-LEGO to be represented as unsearchable uncategorized custom items, another is to equalize brickarms and LEGO making them only two "brands" on the same level.

It's an interesting point. I held a bricklink helping group on Facebook, and I closed it when bricklink opened to brickarms. To me having bricklink not selling custom products it's a feature that may lead me in helping the community again. I would feel very very robbed if I had to pay money twice. I am buying products on bricklink that I assume they have already been bought by someone. So that fee has already being paid. Asking an extra would be like asking to pay twice a fee.

Actually, at the present moment, TLG is everything but what you said. I could enlist around a million reasons starting from "The LEGO Foundation" to the care they have for children and their vision, for the care they have for the community... Think about it. Does Mattel have an Ideas project in which they will produce what YOU will say. Or have them free loads Barbies two times per year to the Barbie Groups? Have you ever seen Hasbro saying "Oh, this toy is not ethical per our vision. But it brings us tons of dollars. No we don't do that." If TLG were to make only money, what could prevent them to make a military line that would bring more money than displease people (including myself)? How many toy companies are investing loads of money on researches on plastic in order to make eco friendly toys? I can go on forever. Seeing TLG as "the next Toy maker" is possible only for people that are very lightly informed on how TLG works. If you just scratch the surface you get the idea of how wrong you can be. But let's see the other side of the coin. Scrap off the TLG retail price all the commercials and advice (3rd party don't need that, they parasite TLG ones), all the boxing, all the packaging, all the design, all the quality controls, etc. etc. You just remain with the price of the plastic and some raw skills to copy that. Actually turns out that the copycat are far more expensive than TLG is compared to the work they are actually making. Even if a copycat costs half the price of the same LEGO box (which is usually the par) don't you agree that all the above (commercial, adv, design, quality, packaging, researches, tests etc etc) cost way more than half the final price? Actually, if you think about it for a second, TLG is making less % profit out of a box than a copycat is. So it's actually the copycat that's asking us a leg. If people do not scratch the surface and limit their reasonment to a very superficial one, that makes not it true.

I was referring to Nicola Sturgeon. But I agree that's not topical, I was just following the out-of-topic discussion :)

I'm not surprised by all the negativity that this is spawning around. People tend to be conservative and watch suspiciously every single step forward. What I feel important to say is: bricklink was on sale since 6 months. It's been a long time nobody at the running company was caring about it anymore. Why do I say this? Error 500. Error 500 everytime everywhere. People random-banned then brought back out of demand. (There are people who saw their NSS / NRS / NPB completed because the admins weren't caring). No new features Old features to be removed never being removed. Classic wanted list has a warning that it will be removed in 06/05/2017. That's 2 years and a half ago. You can't be serious! No customer care. Only people that used it seldom or rarely may have missed all the severe and critical problems BL had through the last years. And I don't think they earn few money out of 3% on every single transaction... So did we need someone to acquire bricklink? Yes we did. This point is out of question. Now, is TLG the good candidate to buy it? For many people that's not. I do not agree with many of their reasons. If there is a group knowing how to handle LEGO stuff, who's better than TLG itself? Being a purist, I have absolutely zero concerns on custom stuff. Instead, another failed promise by the actual (former) bricklink staff was to make a filter that could make you not see all that brickarms stuff. Too bad they never made it. Or, to be more precise, they did it but it simply didn't work correctly. Or, why had brickarms a special treatment? I mean, if I wanted to 3d print my own itaria-no-bricks I couldn't but place them into a "custom items" category which is nothing and is not helpful in meaning of search functions. To me, excluding custom products is a feature. If I had two markets to choose, one with, and one without custom products, I'd go for the latter. I reckon that people have different points of view so I would welcome for all people needing custom stuff another market though I'd never go there. In all the interviews that I read TLG is firmly calming people and telling them that they aren't gonna blowing up bricklink, yet people refuse as much firmly to believe them. My stance is: out of the great damage they would do to the community, out of the possibility to wipe bricklink and make a precious gift to BrickOwl or BrickScout (that now have little purpose) is it really a concern? TLG has two possibilities now. Ruining their relationship with the community, or strengthen it. So I'm not worried on their intentions. It would be super stupid to have malicious intent. Or if not stupid, at least zero farsighted. I'm just slightly worried on the outcome assumed they have good intentions. Even with good intentions they can make bad moves. But for this, it's quite too early to discuss. So I believe all of this, including this comment, is quite pure speculation. This perception about TLG and the copycats a la Sheriff Nottingham and Robin Hood feels not just wrong but super wrong. It's a bias.

When it will happen, if it happens, you won't be even UK any more

I'd say, cutting it through, that TLG is making their market research. They fix the price they seem accordingly to market researches done by people that have far more experience than anyone in this forum. So I think that somebody criticizing their price and strategies without even having a glimpse at their market researches is a little bit... funny, let me say that.

Let's make it super simple shall we? You are German and I am italian. According to the Federal Statistic Office of Germany, in 2017 the average gross annual salary was 45.250 €, as 3770€ per month. In Italy (https://www.statista.com/statistics/708972/average-annual-nominal-wages-of-employees-italy-by-region/) the average is exactly half of that. If it was per your bizarre ideas, in Italy minifigures should cost half of the German price. But, considering that from Brenner to Mittenwald is 70 km, less than an hour car drive, what would prevent German people from buying minifigures in Italy and then resell them in Germany? And no, perhaps your informations are very misleading, but there is absolutely no customs between Italy and Austria or between Austria an Germany as they are all european countries. So I would be able to fill my car with italian minifigures and come back to Germany without any question. And FIY, I find that LEGO bricks are cheaper actually in Germany, so I have already filled my car with LEGO Bricksfor me and friends to bring back to Italy, and nobody has ever questioned me anything. Moreover. I have been stopped by German authorities/Police on the Autobahn with a Van full of LEGO Bricks and nobody told me anything and I was free to go, as everything had a regular receipt.

Yes, maybe that's US case. But US is but A country. Those minifigures are sold on dozens of countries so the US example isn't that relevant.

The Piano would be the last, they have to understand wheter they want it to play or not. So, no Piano in the near future. On the other hand, it's quite difficult they chose to make a Pirate Bay in the 30 years of Pirates anniversary and they don't plan to release it in 2019.

Yes you are right, I will asap!

I wouldn't be too harsh. Nor I think that weighing them on personal income should be a good move. If that was the case, people who go out of the boundaries of their States to buy in a State where they are cheaper.

I was very happy when seeing the pictures on the catalog and still I am now.

Agreed. You can gather info from them but you cannot see them.

No, and no.

I saw a retailer catalogue. So that's reliable.