@monty_bricks said:
"Putting 40901 at £115 threshold when 76478 Dumbledore's office book nook is £109.99 is very irritating. Adding a £4.99 keychain still leaves you 2 pence short"

I think in a shop they would waive that if you asked nicely. I've received some gwp when I was nowhere near the threshold, because I buy a lot more at other times (when there isn't a gwp).

Actually a bit frustrated with the fact there is a big discount on the burrow. Maybe I will wait for next year before purchasing the ministry because of that. Got the gwp with a bundle of smaller sets (I have all the HP figures so far but my budget is getting stretched).

@monty_bricks said:
"Putting 40901 at £115 threshold when 76478 Dumbledore's office book nook is £109.99 is very irritating. Adding a £4.99 keychain still leaves you 2 pence short"

In the US, 76478 is US$129.99. People could buy only that and get both of the GWPs. :P

Pretty disappointing.

*crickets*

@Doctor_Hugh said:
" @Elcascador said:
" @Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

Of course it's intentional. It would even be ill-advised not to do it, from a business perspective."

Although I agree with the logic of doing it, pissing off the core customer base every single time is not good business practice. Knowing how obscenely profitable they are, having a few altruistic policies, rather than blatant profiteering, would go some way towards improving their reputation."

This is pretty much my overwhelming thought on the company these days. I would never bitch at any company for wanting to make a lot of money, but when making all that money comes at the expense of your customers…it becomes irksome.

@Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

Apparently they used to set the schedule 1p less than advertised but seem to no longer do this…

@Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

In the Lego shops I believe they are liberal over this and will give you the GWP if a penny or so short.

I was told by my local store only one person showed up in line for it and was the only person to buy one. They were very skeptical of the 20 units they had selling anytime soon at their location.

Ordered 76478 and a second copy 76424 (which I'll give to my son, as he loves Lego cars) to get the GWP (being a HP minifigures completionist since the reboot); the parcel has already shipped, surprisingly (today being a Saturday).

Later in the day I went to my local Lego Store — which was not on the agenda, which is the reason I ordered online in the first place, but things happen — and saw 76476 being showcased; I must say it looks a bit better in person, as it looks a bit less vertically stretched, but I still think that this whole thing should just have been a one-level thing, preferably with a closed back. And the way it looks now, it certainly isn't worth the RRP. I'll patiently wait for a discount, even if it's in two years' time (like for Gringotts), although I guess it could be exclusive to a couple of retailers (unlike Gringotts) and eventually be discounted.

@Snowy_Tabbert said:
" @monty_bricks said:
"Putting 40901 at £115 threshold when 76478 Dumbledore's office book nook is £109.99 is very irritating. Adding a £4.99 keychain still leaves you 2 pence short"

In the US, 76478 is US$129.99. People could buy only that and get both of the GWPs. :P"

Yup, in Canada the threshold is $170CDN and Dumbledore's book nook is $179.99CDN... not sure which is worse, you being 2 pence short, or me knowing I got the GWP easily but likely because of a higher price!!

@Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

From both personal experience, and talking to staff at the LEGO Store, sometimes it's a hard threshold. You have to hit the exact number or higher to qualify. Sometimes it's a penny short (this is especially true when stuff like the Winter Village sets come in right at the threshold for a holiday GWP). And sometimes the threshold is as much as $1 lower than stated. It's hard to predict, and the only way LEGO Store employees can figure it out is to ring stuff up and see when it works and when it fails.

@Elcascador said:
"Of course it's intentional. It would even be ill-advised not to do it, from a business perspective."

Spoken like someone who's never had to field eight hours of phone calls from pissed off parents who want to know why their Winter Village set didn't come with the GWP they were promised.

@maffyd said:
"I think in a shop they would waive that if you asked nicely. I've received some gwp when I was nowhere near the threshold, because I buy a lot more at other times (when there isn't a gwp)."

That's not my experience. If the purchase doesn't qualify for the GWP, they can't just push a button to not charge you for it. A store manager can choose to hand you a box, but I think even they don't have the power to simply override the charge when it's scanned into the purchase. The late manager at our local store once handed out stuff to people waiting in line to buy 75192 on launch day, including 5001621. But the store hadn't even opened yet, and there was no way they could even ring them up.

@PurpleDave said:
"
@maffyd said:
"I think in a shop they would waive that if you asked nicely. I've received some gwp when I was nowhere near the threshold, because I buy a lot more at other times (when there isn't a gwp)."

That's not my experience. If the purchase doesn't qualify for the GWP, they can't just push a button to not charge you for it. A store manager can choose to hand you a box, but I think even they don't have the power to simply override the charge when it's scanned into the purchase. The late manager at our local store once handed out stuff to people waiting in line to buy 75192 on launch day, including 5001621. But the store hadn't even opened yet, and there was no way they could even ring them up."

I think you've proved my point there. I'm not particularly concerned how they get around the issue, as long as they can.
I'm sure they are reluctant sometimes because it might end up a stocktaking issue, but I can be persuasive.
Of course, it doesn't always work. I doubt I'll see the Enterprise Shuttle promo anytime soon...

@PurpleDave said:
" @Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

From both personal experience, and talking to staff at the LEGO Store, sometimes it's a hard threshold. You have to hit the exact number or higher to qualify. "

If you’re instore you can just add a BaM figure for $3 or whatever though right?

@Doctor_Hugh said:
" @Elcascador said:
" @Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

Of course it's intentional. It would even be ill-advised not to do it, from a business perspective."

Although I agree with the logic of doing it, pissing off the core customer base every single time is not good business practice. Knowing how obscenely profitable they are, having a few altruistic policies, rather than blatant profiteering, would go some way towards improving their reputation."

Their recent figures suggest that the customers (whether they are 'core' or not) keep coming back. I'm not even sure what core means these days when they have brought so many new customers in recently.

@Rimefang said:
"The website is currently broken and experiencing widespread outages.

As usual. "
In fairness, LEGO is a teeny-tiny family-run business that makes such narrow margins it’s practically a charity. You really can’t expect it to have reliable IT.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

From both personal experience, and talking to staff at the LEGO Store, sometimes it's a hard threshold. You have to hit the exact number or higher to qualify. Sometimes it's a penny short (this is especially true when stuff like the Winter Village sets come in right at the threshold for a holiday GWP). And sometimes the threshold is as much as $1 lower than stated. It's hard to predict, and the only way LEGO Store employees can figure it out is to ring stuff up and see when it works and when it fails."

IIRC, you've mentioned this potential discount before. Unfortunately, some of us have no LEGO stores anywhere near us and no suitable local retailers. As a result, I have to order online and, over the years, I have never seen any leeway given on GWP thresholds. It has to be the exact amount or above. Perhaps it really is different in the stores?

@saltytbone said:
" @jezzatheshed said:
"Actually a bit frustrated with the fact there is a big discount on the burrow. "

I'm sure Lego will allow you to pay full price if that suits you better.
"

Asking for a friend, how big was the Burrow discount and was it available in the US?

@Zander said:
" @Rimefang said:
"The website is currently broken and experiencing widespread outages.

As usual. "
In fairness, LEGO is a teeny-tiny family-run business that makes such narrow margins it’s practically a charity. You really can’t expect it to have reliable IT.

"

I tried downloading the app to see if it would be an improvement. It's far, far worse than the website!!

Perhaps the small family company can now afford to hire better devs with their new record profits. That said, I would still avoid using the app version over desktop whenever possible in general.

@maffyd said:
"I think you've proved my point there. I'm not particularly concerned how they get around the issue, as long as they can."

A store manager does have certain discretionary powers, but there are also limits. If one very loyal customer asks for small favors every so often, that’s manageable. If 100 customers show up every week asking for free handouts, it’s going to start looking like cases of product are being stolen out of the stockroom, and if the store manager keeps waving it off, it’s just going to look like they’re the thief.

It also depends on the specific manager and their relationship with various customers. I heard of one store where a customer walked a floor-level employee through a manager override, and when the store manager found out, it soured their relationship with the entire local LUG that customer was a member of. Now anyone who walks into that store who appears to be a member of any LUG gets the cold shoulder, _especially_ if it looks like they’re asking for rules to be bent.

@stefwaffles said:
"
@PurpleDave said:
" @Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

From both personal experience, and talking to staff at the LEGO Store, sometimes it's a hard threshold. You have to hit the exact number or higher to qualify. "

If you’re instore you can just add a BaM figure for $3 or whatever though right?"

I can’t remember if they offer BaM singly, or if you always need to buy in triples (excluding Minifig Factory, which costs more than 3x BaM anyways). But no, in some situations you’ll need to get specific themes to qualify. Just because you can find parts created for the Ninjago theme in the bins doesn’t mean it will ring up as a Ninjago purchase when that’s one of the listed qualifying themes. And you have to be aware that there’s a potential mismatch between a $149.99 purchase and a $150 threshold before you submit payment and walk out the door. Not everybody is. At least in the US, LEGO Stores are frequently limited to malls in affluent areas, and a lot of parents don’t really think much about what they’re buying and what they should be getting, as long as it keeps Junior distracted and happy.

@Belboz said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

From both personal experience, and talking to staff at the LEGO Store, sometimes it's a hard threshold. You have to hit the exact number or higher to qualify. Sometimes it's a penny short (this is especially true when stuff like the Winter Village sets come in right at the threshold for a holiday GWP). And sometimes the threshold is as much as $1 lower than stated. It's hard to predict, and the only way LEGO Store employees can figure it out is to ring stuff up and see when it works and when it fails."

IIRC, you've mentioned this potential discount before. Unfortunately, some of us have no LEGO stores anywhere near us and no suitable local retailers. As a result, I have to order online and, over the years, I have never seen any leeway given on GWP thresholds. It has to be the exact amount or above. Perhaps it really is different in the stores?

"

I have mentioned it before, and I’ve seen indications that it may be a regional thing. The NA division may have decided on their own that certain purchases were resulting in way too many irate customer service calls, especially when Winter Village sets, SW UCS sets, or Modulars keep missing the target spend by one penny. If hundreds of thousands of parents clog the phone system, demanding the GWP be sent to them, and you keep agreeing to do it, it’s a problem that will never go away on its own. Now you’re giving away tons if unqualified GWPs, but you’re also paying employees to pick them as standalone orders, box them up with no paid merchandise included, and ship them (possibly at a flat rate, which means it costs as much to ship a missed GWP as it does a UCS set). You also might need more customer service reps on the phones, and you’ll be making customers with legitimate problems wait longer, causing them to be more upset by the time they finally get through to someone. Far cheaper to just dial the spend threshold down one penny and eliminate the biggest source of First World complaints.

And really, rounding up to the next whole number was a really bad idea to begin with. Spend thresholds should always end in 9, not 0. $49, $99, $149 are a lot more sensible than $50, $100, and $150 when the industry standard is to knock a penny off the MSRP on every single product ever sold.

BTW, my grandfather worked at Hudson’s Department Store in Detroit. My dad said that’s where that tradition originated. They managed all the cash on one central floor, and used vacuum tube systems (like they still use in bank drive thrus) to send payments from, and return change to, the various sales floors. The penny difference was supposedly done to force the sales people to make change on every purchase. Unless they walked in with a bunch of pennies, they’d have to send the payments to the cash floor to get change back, making it harder for them to pocket the money and simply not report the sale.

The other story I’ve heard is that your brain pays more attention to the digits on the left, so you read $149.99 as $140 instead of $150, and you’re less likely to balk at the purchase than you would be if they used whole number pricing. The flip side of this is that using whole number pricing automatically makes a business seem more upscale, like they don’t even carry about the pennies. A weird experience I had with this several years ago was going into a restaurant where Brickworld Chicago used to take place, and not being able to figure out what anything cost. Not only did they use whole number pricing, but they didn’t include dollar signs in the prices at all, so all you’d see for prices was a number, like “10”, or “15”.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Belboz said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

From both personal experience, and talking to staff at the LEGO Store, sometimes it's a hard threshold. You have to hit the exact number or higher to qualify. Sometimes it's a penny short (this is especially true when stuff like the Winter Village sets come in right at the threshold for a holiday GWP). And sometimes the threshold is as much as $1 lower than stated. It's hard to predict, and the only way LEGO Store employees can figure it out is to ring stuff up and see when it works and when it fails."

IIRC, you've mentioned this potential discount before. Unfortunately, some of us have no LEGO stores anywhere near us and no suitable local retailers. As a result, I have to order online and, over the years, I have never seen any leeway given on GWP thresholds. It has to be the exact amount or above. Perhaps it really is different in the stores?

"

I have mentioned it before...

BTW, my grandfather worked at Hudson’s Department Store in Detroit. My dad said that’s where that tradition originated. They managed all the cash on one central floor, and used vacuum tube systems (like they still use in bank drive thrus) to send payments from, and return change to, the various sales floors. The penny difference was supposedly done to force the sales people to make change on every purchase. Unless they walked in with a bunch of pennies, they’d have to send the payments to the cash floor to get change back, making it harder for them to pocket the money and simply not report the sale.

The other story I’ve heard is that your brain pays more attention to the digits on the left, so you read $149.99 as $140 instead of $150, and you’re less likely to balk at the purchase than you would be if they used whole number pricing. The flip side of this is that using whole number pricing automatically makes a business seem more upscale, like they don’t even carry about the pennies. A weird experience I had with this several years ago was going into a restaurant where Brickworld Chicago used to take place, and not being able to figure out what anything cost. Not only did they use whole number pricing, but they didn’t include dollar signs in the prices at all, so all you’d see for prices was a number, like “10”, or “15”."

Of course, there are stores that do not have any prices- like Japanese selvage denim shops. If you have to ask, it's probably not for you.

It feels like that's the point we're reaching with the large Star Wars and Harry Potter sets.

@StyleCounselor said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @Belboz said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

From both personal experience, and talking to staff at the LEGO Store, sometimes it's a hard threshold. You have to hit the exact number or higher to qualify. Sometimes it's a penny short (this is especially true when stuff like the Winter Village sets come in right at the threshold for a holiday GWP). And sometimes the threshold is as much as $1 lower than stated. It's hard to predict, and the only way LEGO Store employees can figure it out is to ring stuff up and see when it works and when it fails."

IIRC, you've mentioned this potential discount before. Unfortunately, some of us have no LEGO stores anywhere near us and no suitable local retailers. As a result, I have to order online and, over the years, I have never seen any leeway given on GWP thresholds. It has to be the exact amount or above. Perhaps it really is different in the stores?

"

I have mentioned it before...

BTW, my grandfather worked at Hudson’s Department Store in Detroit. My dad said that’s where that tradition originated. They managed all the cash on one central floor, and used vacuum tube systems (like they still use in bank drive thrus) to send payments from, and return change to, the various sales floors. The penny difference was supposedly done to force the sales people to make change on every purchase. Unless they walked in with a bunch of pennies, they’d have to send the payments to the cash floor to get change back, making it harder for them to pocket the money and simply not report the sale.

The other story I’ve heard is that your brain pays more attention to the digits on the left, so you read $149.99 as $140 instead of $150, and you’re less likely to balk at the purchase than you would be if they used whole number pricing. The flip side of this is that using whole number pricing automatically makes a business seem more upscale, like they don’t even carry about the pennies. A weird experience I had with this several years ago was going into a restaurant where Brickworld Chicago used to take place, and not being able to figure out what anything cost. Not only did they use whole number pricing, but they didn’t include dollar signs in the prices at all, so all you’d see for prices was a number, like “10”, or “15”."

Of course, there are stores that do not have any prices- like Japanese selvage denim shops. If you have to ask, it's probably not for you.

It feels like that's the point we're reaching with the large Star Wars and Harry Potter sets."

Michigan law was relaxed so you no longer need to put price stickers on every product, but you are still legally required to put prices on the shelf or a menu, so consumers can see how much it costs before it’s rung up at the register. Vehicles and real estate are the only two major exceptions I’m aware of, and both of those usually involve negotiated prices anyways.

@Doctor_Hugh said:
" @Elcascador said:
" @Belboz said:
"That happens so regularly it must be more design than coincidence. We've all been to the 'penny short' basket!"

Of course it's intentional. It would even be ill-advised not to do it, from a business perspective."

Although I agree with the logic of doing it, pissing off the core customer base every single time is not good business practice. Knowing how obscenely profitable they are, having a few altruistic policies, rather than blatant profiteering, would go some way towards improving their reputation."

Afols waiting for GWPs are not the core customer base, TLG would be in big trouble if that were true. The vast majority of sales and income are one-off sales coming from kids and people buying for kids, with a recent uptick in one-off sales coming from brand new adults.

All of the pills are much easier to swallow (or avoid swallowing) when you accept that TLG isn’t centered around Afols. It’s the other way around

@PurpleDave said:
" @maffyd said:
"I think you've proved my point there. I'm not particularly concerned how they get around the issue, as long as they can."

A store manager does have certain discretionary powers, but there are also limits. If one very loyal customer asks for small favors every so often, that’s manageable. "

I did say it doesn't always work, and the scenario you've described is exactly what I am referring to. I hope that you didn't assume I meant every time anyone wants a freebie and asks for it, it happens? Because I didn't mean that, and I don't think I ever implied that.

I still think we're agreeing :-)