Horror Stories - Lego you bought off flea-bay and BL

[nobody]

I intentionally bought two lots of broken pieces off ebay this week. the first considered of plates, which i'm satisfied with. the second is a whole bulk lot (a kilo I think) , mainly bricks, which are more dirty then damaged. Looks like vintage 70s pieces to me, some pieces I've never seen before. Not really a horror story as I wanted damaged pieces.

[BrickG]

I've never really had a horror story from Bricklink. Though my orders are wrong like 25% of the time. It's always the same thing too, color. People seem to suck at being able to tell the difference between some of the similar colors Lego produces. :P

Even then they always send a replacement.

[DrJB]

I've never really had a horror story from Bricklink. Though my orders are wrong like 25% of the time. It's always the same thing too, color. People seem to suck at being able to tell the difference between some of the similar colors Lego produces. :P

Even then they always send a replacement.

Well, if you keep in consideration that 37% of men (not women) have some sort of color blindness ... that may explain your mis0haps. That iw hy they say women are better than men at picking colors.

What I mean by color blindness are things like: purple vs. blue, shades of grey vs. pink, aqua vs light blue ... etc. It is true, look it up.

[TheLegoDr]

^Well everyone's cones are going to be reading at different wavelengths, so people can view the same color differently.

However, LEGO does produce some simlar colors OR they have the same color only made at different times and thus have a terrible consistency. That is pretty common with LEGO. If you actually compare a lot of the same color side by side, you will notice the discrepancies. That doesn't necessarily mean it is incorrect though, unfortunately.

With that said, there are some that are really similar and people probably just need better light to distinguish between them. Low light hurts contrast more.

[Tomsche]

I'm holding (brown brick build) wood here, but so far I haven't had any issues with BrickLink. Don't really use eBay for Lego though

Edited December 6, 2013 by Tomsche

[62Bricks]

I've completed hundreds of LEGO purchases and sales on eBay - mostly sales - and only have a few bad experiences. One purchase was from a guy with lots of excellent feedback as a seller but he normally sold vintage shoes and was just getting rid of his son's LEGO collection. He divided it into two large lots and I won one of them at auction. In the pictures there were two moon baseplates clearly pictured as well as some ship hulls. They were not in the package I received. I tried a friendly inquiry about it and got an angry reply that he had probably shipped out the baseplates with the other lot he sold and that I had no reason to complain because I had only paid $150 for a bunch of LEGO he had spent hundreds of dollars for new and anyway LEGO is LEGO. It's the only negative feedback I've ever left.

I also use the strategy of looking closely at the listings with blurry photos and clueless descriptions and have found some real bargains. I'm a piece collector and don't care much about minifigs or themes. That means I can pull out desirable stuff and turn around and sell it to pay for my bulk lots. Two weeks ago I bought a blurry bulk lot of 3 pounds of bricks that included about 25 classic space minifigs. I paid $22.50 and $12 shipping. I pulled out the 12 best minifigs, took bright, clear photos, wrote a good description and title and a few hours ago sold them for $47.00. Accounting for my eBay and Paypal fees, I'm up about $15 on the deal plus 3 pounds of what turned out to be nice, clean bricks.

The main headache buying on eBay is sorting out the non-LEGO pieces. Here again, though, if you're willing to take the time to sort it out and if the photos are good enough you can get an idea of how much LEGO you're actually getting, you can adjust your bidding accordingly and often get a good deal.

[Vee]

I have been buying from ebay since 2000. I have had two problems so far. In one, long time ago, I got my money back, no problem. In the other it just happened. I bought a new sealed Lego set for a "too good to be true" price (retail price but set is sold out already) from a seller with ZERO feedback. I didn't care about the risk because the worst it could happen was that I was not going to get my item and I psychologically prepared myself for that. And, indeed, the seller is not sending the item, I have already started the process with ebay to get my money back, only around 50 bucks. With the guarantee ebay gives to buyers to get our money back if you get the wrong item or no item, I don't see a problem to take risks, even if high, when the money involved is not much. I am patient and waiting for the refund is not a problem as long as I do get the refund in full

About Bricklink, since I am new to lego fever, I started using it at the end of November only. I have already made a bunch of purchases and only one problem: one vendor forgot to add 3 pieces. I contacted him and he right away told me he was going to send them to me (from Europe) at no cost to me. But, since the 3 pieces were not expensive and I soon had more stuff to buy from BL, I added them to another order (from another seller) and told him not to bother. He sent me a 10% discount coupon for my next purchase at this store but I am not sure I will ever use it because I chose my sellers now based on Brickficiency and chances of choosing that store are slim - there are too many. But it showed that he is a good seller and cares about his reputation.

I am thinking now to record, on camera, when I open a bag received from BL seller. I feel weird if a piece is missing and I complain because it is my word against the word of the seller and I am always worried that s/he will think I am not telling the truth. I assume they have a way to check what they really sent, like taking pictures of the lot, to record. I would do that.

[Deathleech]

I've made around 20 Lego purchases from BrickLink and so far they have all been pretty good. The worst was an order where three helmets had the nose piece on them damaged. Two had slight stress lines and one was pushed in and cracked from the stress. This was probably damaged in the mail since it was an international order and the plastic at that spot is prone to breaking. It wasn't a huge deal. I had another seller unable to fill an order because they didnt have all the pieces, but they refunded me for what they didnt have quickly. Finally a third international order took about a month to get to me but I guess it was due to customs holding it. The seller sent me a tracking number as proof and indeed everything was as he said... Ship day, delay in customs, expected received date, etc.

Other than that every order has been perfect from BL, and even those above weren't terrible. It should be noted all these orders were listed as new. I have never ordered any Lego from eBay because I tend to just buy minifigures and they are always significantly cheaper on BL, usually as much as a few dollars. I have sold tons on eBay and never had any significant problems. A few people never paid and i got my fees refunded (4 or 5 out of 200+ sales). Only a few of those sales have been Lego though.

Edited December 26, 2013 by Deathleech

[SweetiePie88]

My story is an on going i'm having to get straightened out. I recently won a small lot of parts from ebay and there was a mix up. I got an item meant for someone else so i had to email the seller. They emailed the guy who's item i got to see if HE got my order(he did) so i had to go mail the item i got meant for the guy back to the seller, the guy who got my stuff had to send it back to the seller, and now i'm Going to be in a waiting game for the lego to get back to the seller and then for the lego to come to me.

That now means that most of the minecraft moc'ing i was going to try doing is now on hold since i need the 16 X 16 plates that are in the won lot. not my day i tell ya!

[obsidianheart]

Placed an order on Bricklink last week, never got an invoice. Sent the seller a message a couple days later, and he said "Please be patient, I'm processing your order". Never heard back. Seller got 2 pieces of feedback in the time since the order was placed, one positive from a satisfied customer, and one negative from someone who never got an invoice either. The negative was removed since the sale technically never happened. I'm not out any money or anything, so this is more of a LEGO annoyance story.

As far as I remember, this is the only problem I've ever had, but there's some neutral and negative feedback from around the time of my accident that indicates I may have caused some problems before!

Edited January 30, 2015 by obsidianheart

[mpfirnhaber]

I've had nothing but good experiences.

On BL I've received a few wrong parts or a few cracked parts, but the sellers have always been more than reasonable when it comes to sending out replacements. I've made maybe 50 purchases from stores all over the world with no issues.

On eBay, I either buy for my own collection or I buy to resell. I often get really lucky with small lots, and can pull a few gems out before I turn around and piece it out, doubling or tripling my investment. I recently bought a lot of 300 printed parts for $15 and a lot of 150 transparent parts for $10. After pulling out about $20 worth of parts for my own collection (including some 3762 and 4448 trans-yellow in fantastic condition!), I cleaned up the rest and resold in smaller, more targeted lots. I'm up about $30 over my original investment and still have more to list.

Sets are a different story. I mostly buy Classic Space and sometimes photos are deceiving. Sometimes I get what I expected, but sometimes sets that look bright and clean in photos arrive with old, beat-up yellowed parts, but then I just clean it and whiten it, and maybe make a small profit reselling it. You win some and you lose some, but in the long run I always come out ahead.

I guess the only slightly negative eBay experience I've had recently is a $270 Classic Space acquisition that smelled really, really weird. Everything had a strong chemical smell, sort of a mix between moth balls and WD-40. I had to air it t for a couple of days to get the smell off. Luckily the parts were in amazing condition, and the minifigs all had bright, shiny gold on their torsos, so it was worth it in the end!

[clm]

Not so much a horror story as a WTF story, but a week ago I purchased a Metalbeard's Sea Cow set off of ebay. The seller apparently had a few listed and at least one of the past sales appeared to have been received and feedback left so I bought one with a 'best offer' of $225 shipped. A day or so later he had sold out and then another auction showed up with even more, I started getting the hint there was some funny business going on at that point but decided to give the seller the benefit of the doubt. About 4 days after the auction closed a valid tracking number showed up and said the item would arrive the following Monday so I waited... And on that Monday the auction was deleted from ebay along with all of the other ones the seller had sold or was selling.... and the Sea Cow arrived.... from Walmart with a paid invoice of $266.92?!? The oddest thing is under ordered by there is nothing but 0.

Like WTF?

Chris

[Darth Punk]

Not so much a horror story as a WTF story, but a week ago I purchased a Metalbeard's Sea Cow set off of ebay. The seller apparently had a few listed and at least one of the past sales appeared to have been received and feedback left so I bought one with a 'best offer' of $225 shipped. A day or so later he had sold out and then another auction showed up with even more, I started getting the hint there was some funny business going on at that point but decided to give the seller the benefit of the doubt. About 4 days after the auction closed a valid tracking number showed up and said the item would arrive the following Monday so I waited... And on that Monday the auction was deleted from ebay along with all of the other ones the seller had sold or was selling.... and the Sea Cow arrived.... from Walmart with a paid invoice of $266.92?!? The oddest thing is under ordered by there is nothing but 0.

Like WTF?

Chris

It's called a drop ship. Someone uses a stolen credit card to purchase an item and has it delivered directly to he buyer. He has your money, you have an item bought with a stolen credit card. Which if the police were to get involved, doubtful, you would probably lose both.

[Robianco]

Yep... It's an old trick usually set up on larger sets to make as much money on as few sets as possible.

Someone has paid in full for that set and know nothing about it. Not to scaremonger... But if the person with the stolen card tracks the sales to Walmart and they have s record that a sale was sent to you then it's at the discretion of the seller whether you keep the Lego set. If not then you may still be able to claim back from PayPal.

[DrJB]

I had that happen twice, once with Walmart, other with Target. I was suspicious of course and in both cases I called Walmart/Target and inquired (spoke to a live person). I was assured that the purchases were legit. Unless the scheme/scam involves people from those e-stores as well. The plot thickens ...

Edited January 30, 2015 by DrJB

[Faefrost]

Not so much a horror story as a WTF story, but a week ago I purchased a Metalbeard's Sea Cow set off of ebay. The seller apparently had a few listed and at least one of the past sales appeared to have been received and feedback left so I bought one with a 'best offer' of $225 shipped. A day or so later he had sold out and then another auction showed up with even more, I started getting the hint there was some funny business going on at that point but decided to give the seller the benefit of the doubt. About 4 days after the auction closed a valid tracking number showed up and said the item would arrive the following Monday so I waited... And on that Monday the auction was deleted from ebay along with all of the other ones the seller had sold or was selling.... and the Sea Cow arrived.... from Walmart with a paid invoice of $266.92?!? The oddest thing is under ordered by there is nothing but 0.

Like WTF?

Chris

As others have pointed out it is known as the Drop Ship Scam. The big tipoff of it is it involved a large pricey CURRENTLY AVAILABLE item for which the price is too good to be true. Often 20-30% below MSRP via a source such as E-Bay. While not immune to it Blricklink seems to have fewer of these. I suspect that it is largely because BL as a specific niche hobbiest resource tends to have a more savy and informed user base who knows the pricing of these specific items, so things that seem suspicious are more prone to be called out by the user community.

Here are the things to watch for with these scams. If you receive the product today and call the apparent actual vendor (in your case Walmart) it may still look legit to them. It will not flag through anyones system until the owner of the stolen CC# gets the bill and challenges it. Then the vendor will get a chargeback and notice of the fraudulent CC. That can sometimes take weeks to trickle down. While technically this does count as receiving of stolen property, most Law Enforcement is well familiar with the true nature of it and will not come after you. But the vendors flag you and your shipping address in their systems and will never take orders from you again. So once that CC comes back as stolen Walmart will no longer do business with your home address. However if you contact the merchant and explain that something did not seem right with you receiving a product from Walmart as you ordered it from E-Bay etc they will normally be very cooperative. In most cases the info you have on the scammer is more valuable to them than the product you received and they simply tell you to keep the item. (note. The forgive everything and let you keep it only works ONCE.)

[Cloveapple]

I've bought Lego on eBay, BrickOwl, and Bricklink.

All the eBay transactions were just fine. I usually stick to sellers with at least 98% positive feedback. Two of the eBay orders were random grab bags of bricks or minifigure parts, but most of them were for specific minifig parts. I got a mixed up minifig once (with one fig's bdy and another's head) when a lady was selling her son's Harry Potter collection, but I don't think it was deceptive or anything since she photographed it just like she sent it. (I just bid low out of curiosity since I was seriously bidding on some of her other stuff.)

If there's any down side to eBay, it's just been the danger of bidding just a tiny bit more to stop things from "getting away" and the hassle of the some of the annoying shopping cart bugs that sometimes means you have to contact a seller for a correct total.

Brick Owl is probably my favorite buying site, since the buying process is slightly more streamlined than at Bricklink. So far all my experiences there have been good.

Bricklink has also been good for the most part. However, I've realized that (unlike on eBay, where things are a little more centrally controlled) it's important to read each store's individual page of terms to make sure I'm not agreeing to something obnoxious. Unlike eBay the terms are not on the sales page, so you can easily miss something big.

I've had my only unpleasant interaction on a Bricklink purchase. I recently left neutral feedback on an order that sat for over 20 days before being mailed (the terms page did say they were slow, but over 20 days slow?) and now they are repeat messaging me to get me to change my feedback. Annoying, but not the stuff of nightmares.

[ReplicaOfLife]

Wow, that drop ship scam sounds pretty unpleasant. I'd hate to get caught up in something like that, where you could end up in problems (even if its just not being able to order from seomwhere again) without actually doing anything wrong.

My personal experience with Ebay so far was pretty good, but I either bought MISB sets from actual stores, or bulk used lego. I don't buy from anyonme with a feedback of less than 99,9%, and only from sellers with a consistent feedback profile.

Ehen buying bulk, I usually go for auctions that have some pics that still don't clearly show what's in there (so your usual 'pile of Lego on the floor kind of pics). I scrutinize them very closely and then place a bid. For example last year I bought a bulk lot that just had something like 'Monorail, spacetrain, technic, lot" as the auction titel and a few blurry photos that just showed a pile of Lego with some aprtially assembled sets and a few instructions. I bought it for ~115€ incl shipping. When I received it, I was pleased to find it contained a nearly complete 6990 Futuron monorail plus a couple of other sets and basic bricks. I was able to make sure from the pics that all integral parts (train, track, large panel pieces etc) were there, and in the end it was only missing a couple of basic parts. I completed it with pieces from my collection, used one printed round tile to complete my own (otherwise complete) monorail, took good pictures, and with a detailed description of the set sold it for ~150€. So in the end, I gained 35€ and had 3-5kg of Lego for free.The lot also contained a few other large sets, e.g. a big police station from the mid nineties.

BL has been mostly good to me aswell, out of 30 or so orders, so far I had 3 with basic mixups/missing pieces that were easily remedied. The sellers all were very cooperative when I contacted them and sent free replacements, and I could keep pieces I had received in error.

The biggest issue I had so far was with another order. I had placed a huge order in one store, including some used bricks. The splash page said 'all used bricks in good condition, no scratched, damaged or very old pieces'. When I got the order, most bricks were in great condition indeed, but a number of white pieces were shockingly bad. Deeply yellowed, full of scratches and dents etcpp. Most of those even had Pat. Pend. or Pat. Pend. scratched out. I contacted the seller, and again they were very cooperative, requested some pics of the damaged parts and then sent new ones for free. He said they propably accidentally put the broken parts in their store and threw the good ones away while sorting. Throughout, they were very friendly, and I ordered from them again.

Edited January 31, 2015 by RogerSmith

[Jared]

Haven't had a bad brick links experience.... yet.... as for ebay, would probably never buy from there since you netiher can tell what you're getting or the seller can be really difficult and untrustworthy. Though I did come across an interesting article today that really relates to this:

http://www.jangbricks.com/2015/02/used-lego-sellers-important-wake-up-call.html

[Lady_Scarlett]

I only buy from Ebay and never have any problem. But I mostly buy from the same 3 or 4 sellers, I know them and they are really great.

I don't understand how BL is working so I'm unable to find anything

[Robin Creations]

Nothing that bad from Bricklink, just a missing minifig, but the seller apologized and sent me a replacement.

The bad one was when I bought Kai's Blade Cycle from Wal-Mart for $11 ( a bit after it was retired). When I got home and opened it, it was full of Knex parts. I suppose someone switched out the parts, but the bad thing was there were instructions ( for Kai's Blade Cycle) in it. Then I had to drive halfway across town to refund it.

[JohnnyBrix]

bricklink is usually quite good, execpt when they mix up all the parts into one bag when i order multiple different parts!

[bonox]

I've gone through hundreds of ebay lego sets, and have had my share of stuff that didn't turn up as advertised/pictured. I have found though that if you approach the issue calmly and are clear with what you want, that sellers with decent feedback are usually more than happy to work through it with you. Mind you, i've never been one to push for extreme outcomes, but will aim to get partial refunds so I can get missing bits, or else have the seller find the missing parts. I've had maybe a dozen of these out of 200, and all but one were handled happily by both sides. I will check the nature of seller feedback though and i'll ignore negatives for stupid stuff. I saw one recently which said "item came with price tag on it saying $9.99 and I paid more than that". That buyer gave a negative feedback - and that negative is not something that would stop me from using that seller.

BL on the other hand has been outstanding over my past 30 or so orders from all over the world. I do make sure I read store terms though and try to use sellers with a decent chunk of feedback. As usual, when there's an issue, I always try a soft approach to begin with and always offer positive reviews and notes of thanks where warranted (ie contacting seller, not just feedback tickboxes on sites).

[Grosse Kind]

Might i recommend building anything you purchase immediately? Irrespective of size. So far, have only made two ebay set purchases, and am pleased i had a couple of basics around as both had pieces missing. The second of them the seller included a bricklink checklist that didn't match what arrived. All was sorted out in the end with the missing/wrong (some of which i've since learned are pretty rare and model specific) items dutifully rectified but from 20,000 km away, if i'd left it as purchased and sold it on as was or decided to build it months down the track, i'd have been out of pocket to rectify it myself or subject to negative feedback from the next buyer. Nobody's perfect and mistakes get made but best to know sooner than later.