anneinco Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 I will start by saying that occasionally there are missing pieces in Lego sets and Lego is good about making it right. However, I want to know if anyone has come across this situation. 2 Christmases ago I was gifted the Grand Emporium. It was a year before I was able to open it and start building. I was off to a great start but when I finished the first level I started realizing something was far from right. At first I thought "score, lots of extra pieces" but then was concerned when I realized I was missing pieces for level 2. Contacted Lego and they were wonderful but it was still a frustrating experience. They sent a parts list and I had to go bag by bag to figure out what I was missing. It took a couple hours labeling bags based on their list and double checking cause there were extra bags. I let them know what I thought was missing and pieces were sent. 10 months later I finally have time and space to pull it out again and make it through level 2. I am on a roll and figure I will start level 3, and somehow, level 3 is missing pieces. I honestly can not believe this. Not a piece or two, but it has to be at least 1-2 bags. Everything was kept together since the moment the box was opened. I am going to try customer service again tomorrow but I thought I looked through level 3s bags too. I really am hoping they still have a record of my calls from earlier this year, because I have never heard this happening before and it seems like such a stretch. Update- just got off the phone with Lego for the second time today. 59 missing pieces and the gal with worked with me was awesome. She kept laughing as I went down the list especially when I got to the two pieces that were missing 19 each. She said it almost sounds like it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and someone just shoved bags into a box and called it good. (For fun, did a count on my first missing piece order and there was 188 pieces they had to send. So in all about 1/10 of pieces were missing... Crazy). Final update- pieces came just before Christmas but I did not get to building until last night. Finished up with just one final piece missing. It is not seen, so I found a spare of a different color to replace it. In the end, I have a gallon size bag full of extras and part of a second gallon bag full of larger flat pieces. My daughter is thrilled! Especially since there are some minifigures. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idnib Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 Given the current state of things, they're probably in my back room. My apologies. Please have them bill me directly. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenn- Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 I'm sorry that you are frustrated. I can honestly say we've never had a kit show without pieces. Now arriving with completely messed up instructions is another story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Elf Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 I had no idea Lego would replace missing bricks. I'm impressed. Is that true regardless of where you purchase the kit? I vaguely remember ds missing something in one of his kits but he has bins of extra pieces so he was able to find what he needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plink Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 I am pretty sure LEGO is financed solely on my purchases alone, and we have only had one kit arrive without a brick. They were great about mailing us the piece (side-note: it is hilarious to find a full size bubble envelope in your mailbox for a single brick). I wouldn't hesitate to contact them about the problem you are experiencing. On the other hand, my sister worked at ToysRUs and she said it wasn't uncommon for greedy-cruel-kid-hating-people to buy a kit, remove the minifigs or other interesting pieces to resell, and then reseal the box and return it to the store. At certain times of year they would have stacks of returned LEGO boxes that were missing bags. (These were the boxes that had been returned a 2nd time by the parents of disappointed kids - the first ones looked okay so the staff re-shelved them not knowing that they were tampered with) Point of this story: Never buy a damaged LEGO box, and always check to make sure that all of your bags are present immediately before your kids start to build. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SparklyUnicorn Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 I've never encountered this, but Legos take advice from the socks and pencils and hide in odd places or just vanish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrsMommy Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 I had no idea Lego would replace missing bricks. I'm impressed. Is that true regardless of where you purchase the kit? I vaguely remember ds missing something in one of his kits but he has bins of extra pieces so he was able to find what he needed. Yes, they'll replace it, no questions asked, no matter where the set was purchased. There's even a simple form you can fill out on the website as long as you have the set number. Lego has the most awesome customer service I've ever countered. OP: That's the strangest thing I've ever heard. I bet that they were stolen out of the box before you got it, because I can't imagine Lego making a mistake that big. It's unusual to miss a piece in a set, much less whole bags. This is a good warning to everyone to inspect boxes carefully before purchase though, something I wouldn't have even thought of before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mlktwins Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 My son received a Star Wars set (a $70 set) for his bday in June. We opened it in late October and bags 1 and 3 were missing (these bags included the mini figs). I had bought it at Walmart and it was past time to return it. It took me several hours and 2 shipments, but Lego replaced every piece that was missing without hesitation. The box I had bought was not damaged and it looked like the tape had never been removed. I was shocked. We are just getting into Legos here and is what my son wants most for Christmas. Hoping none of the new sets gives us problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KidsHappen Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 I bought several Harry Potter sets back in 2001-2002 and out of ten sets I may have been missing as many pieces. I seem to recall that one set was missing more than one piece so yeah it does happen sometimes. I am not really sure what their process is so not sure how it happens but obviously they are aware that it does happen because they replaced them all, no problem at all. I have also had them replace lost pieces for free. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 My son received a Star Wars set (a $70 set) for his bday in June. We opened it in late October and bags 1 and 3 were missing (these bags included the mini figs). I had bought it at Walmart and it was past time to return it. It took me several hours and 2 shipments, but Lego replaced every piece that was missing without hesitation. The box I had bought was not damaged and it looked like the tape had never been removed. I was shocked. We are just getting into Legos here and is what my son wants most for Christmas. Hoping none of the new sets gives us problems. We have a shop here that sells mostly returned items, and I've been surprised at just how many lego sets look complete and originally sealed, but aren't. It's been a good place to get really cheap bulk pieces, though. I've never tried contacting lego to get missing pieces for those sets because I don't expect completion. We did once buy a badly damaged box set from the Lego outlet at Discover Mills for next to nothing that looked like a forklift ran over it. We bought it more out of curiosity than anything else. One, count it, one piece was damaged. I sent photos to Lego of the box and that piece, more as a "See, your sets stand up to almost everything" than anything else, and they not only replaced the one broken piece, but the entire set! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
applethyme Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 Lego is awesome. At the Lego store if the box is damaged at all they mark it down 15%. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajfries Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 HEY!! I had no idea you could get replacement pieces!!! DS has lost a few pieces from one of his sets & I never thought to check the lego website. For those wondering, they have separate options for "pieces missing from original set" and "Lost pieces" and even "A piece broke while I was building". WOW! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anneinco Posted December 6, 2014 Author Share Posted December 6, 2014 Lego is amazing. We still have 3-4 sets (larger) wait ing to be built with more coming for Christmas. That makes me nervous after this experience but it is what it is. I don't think anything is retired, which is good, but I am half tempted for anything over 1000 pieces to ask for a bag list so I can check before I build. I am sure this is not close to normal for them. OP: That's the strangest thing I've ever heard. I bet that they were stolen out of the box before you got it, because I can't imagine Lego making a mistake that big. It's unusual to miss a piece in a set, much less whole bags. This is a good warning to everyone to inspect boxes carefully before purchase though, something I wouldn't have even thought of before.I forgot about this. It probably came up last year. The odd thing is that by looking at my set when I dumped it out, your wild never suspect there were pieces missing. When I originally talked with Lego there should have been, let's say 17 bags for level 1. I had 21. The picture below is left over pieces from that level and fills 1/2 a gallon zip lock. It also includes the 3-4 mini figures from that level. I am not sure what's left over from level 2 yet since I am confused about missing pieces and what could extra from level two vs needed for level three. I am guessing they quality control by weight checks and that is the only way it passed through?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathryn Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 The only missing pieces I've ever encountered were sets bought from Walmart. We've bought three different sets from there that *looked* brand new but someone had stolen the minifigures out of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happypamama Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 We have bought many, many sets of LEGO so far (and there's no end in sight), and we have had one piece missing out of one set, just a specialty brick missing from one of DS1's LOTR sets, IIRC. It was a brand-new set, totally sealed, and with all gazillion hundred pieces, one had simply been left out. No big deal at all (except that my son had to wait to finish his set). LEGO replaced it quickly and happily. They truly have the most amazing customer service. I've also had them replace pieces that WE have lost over the years, and several times, if it's just been one or two pieces, they have sent them for free, which is awfully nice of them. For sets that have lost more pieces, it's cheap to replace them, but at $4.95 or whatever they charge as a flat-rate shipping, it's not worth it for $1.20 worth of parts or so. I actually need to make a list from several sets and request them all at once to take advantage of the shipping. The only thing they won't sell you at all is minifig pieces to character sets. Bofur's hair went missing, so I contacted LEGO, and they said they can't sell those separately because they don't own the rights to do so, but they can, one time, replace the piece for free if I send them proof of purchase (which seems entirely fair to me). Before we had a chance to do so, we found the missing hair, though. I'd call them and ask. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anneinco Posted December 6, 2014 Author Share Posted December 6, 2014 I called earlier and was told I need to provide a list. Last time I went bag by bag and somehow still messed things up. Just spent 2 hours going through book three and came up with about 80 missing pieces. Most of them the tan color that makes up the level. I was nice however and went through the extra pieces from level 1 and was able to bring the total down to 65. Have just over 1 gallon ziplock of extra pieces now from this set. Now to call them back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happi duck Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 Buying and returning to steal the mini figs makes the toys r us return policy make sense! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antsam Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 One timely son bought a large lego set with birthday money and when we got home and opened it, we found.... 10 collector pages of old baseball cards!!! My son cried- he really wanted those Legos!. When we brought them back, the guy at target didn't even seem surprised. He said he has seen everything returned in lego boxes. People steal the pieces and then return the box with other stuff in it. I always wondered if some kind uncle was tricking his nephew (who hated Legos) by hiding the cards in that box. Maybe the kid returned it and never knew it was full of cool baseball cards!! Jodie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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