New Pick a Brick service now live

Can't wait to see how this works!

there's way more technic but it seems like fewer parts overall.

It looks like searching with simple key words works fine. I have used the ancient version a few times and must admit that it was not always as easy as I would have liked to. I used to go and search on Bricklink more than on Lego, even if it took me a while before I fully understood and mastered the way Bricklink site worked as well :) But it seems that it will be a bit easier and better now on Lego official site. Good move.

Is the "£5,00 service fee for Standard orders below £10" some horrendous error?

Read that as £5,000 at first... guess it should be £5.00...? Still, yeesh, bit of a step-up from £2.00 flat delivery.

@Andhe said:
"Is the "£5,00 service fee for Standard orders below £10" some horrendous error?

Read that as £5,000... guess it should be £5.00...?"

That'll be £5.

That's a big extra cost. Previously, BnP had no additional costs, regardless of order size. That meant you could, if you really wanted, order just a single part. Now it's effectively a £10 minimum.

Are there any limits to the number of unique pieces you can order in one go ? As the pick a brick had a limit of around 95 unique pieces that could be in your bag.

That was a concern of mine since everything else is going up in price, I was worried how high these individual pieces might go up.

But having a minimum order now will make it trickier since sometimes you order stuff and forget, so have to make another smaller order to avoid it going out of stock. But I guess now if out of stock just disappears then you'll just assume it doesn't exist online and have to resort to bricklink for most pieces.

Disappointing. 3 TRAIN WHEEL Ø30 M+U FLANGE design ID 4543943 or part ID 85489, which in Black were never available in the old system, but you could get in Red. Are not listed in either colour now. These are the train wheels in several train sets, namely 75955 Hogwarts Express or 10277 Crocodile Locomotive.

Seems like ordering from here might be the only way I'm ever going to get the Home Alone house!

I'm glad the two services are merging and I'm excited for this to roll out in the US, but I really hope prices don't dramatically increase.

@M_longer said:
"There's almost no brick selection for customers in Poland when compared to UK version.
"

Same with the US. I am amazed by just the selection under "animals and nature" in the UK site!

@M_longer said:
"There's almost no brick selection for customers in Poland when compared to UK version.
"

Same gówna to prawda

A lot of Pieces such as animals and minifigure parts are not on the new site

Looking at prices, seems quite a lot of standard parts have come down in price, and have harmonised. Makes it more competitive for bulk buying. But some of the more specialist or rare parts are more expensive.

Does not work in Slovenia, still old site :(

@Huw said:
" @maniac said:
"Would be great if we could choose to return more elements per page. "

An option to show all of them would be most useful.
"

True but a few options should be given. (20 {Default}, 50, 100, All)

@yellowcastle said:
"I hate change. :)

-It looks like we have also lost the ROTATE option that had previously been available on PAB. This was helpful for those items which were not perfectly clear with the original picture."

Click on an element for a pop-up, and then you can drag across the image that shows in the pop-up to rotate its view.

@Skeletor said:
"A few observations...

After searching for parts using a set number, it would be useful to then have the opportunity to filter parts by colour...
"

that exists, just search the set number, then use the drop down filters for colour (or, indeed, category, colour family etc).

@dulcaoin said:
" @yellowcastle said:
"I hate change. :)

-It looks like we have also lost the ROTATE option that had previously been available on PAB. This was helpful for those items which were not perfectly clear with the original picture."

Click on an element for a pop-up, and then you can drag across the image that shows in the pop-up to rotate its view."
That only appears to work for items that were previously on PAB. For example, it doesn't work on the bendy horse. :)

@CCC said:
"Searching is definitely better. It is also good they have removed a lot of the out of stock parts (like most minifig torsos were on B+P) so it is cleaner. Most prices seem about the same as before but some have gone up significantly, including many animals. The largest increase I've spotted so far is x3. The clear glass 4x6 panels have gone from 6p to 18p."
In the U.S., 1x4x6 glass was like .16 on PAB and .71 on BNP.

@Coconapple said:
"Already seeing some great feedback on this release! Thanks for taking the time to leave your comments here. Rest assured we (PAB engineering team) are reading them and already discussing things like further improving the search functionality and out of stock bricks!"
Thank you very much for taking all of our feedback and for being so open and responsive. :)

I'm seeing a lot of interesting parts but I agree that we need to be able to filter out all the Duplo. While there are definitely some great Duplo parts most are way too big to be used with the Classic Lego so I'd hate to end up ordering something that doesn't work with the scale I'm building in.

@JV_Bricks said:
"A lot of Pieces such as animals and minifigure parts are not on the new site"

True, i tried to find the body of the elephant but it's not present (6340167).

There do seem to be a few bits of odd behaviour on the page.
For example, I was curious about the dark orange horse mentioned earlier, so I went to the page and searched for "horse", which gave me some results, including "toy horse no. 4" and "toy horse no. 2" which are clearly the same piece with different decoration. I clicked on no. 4, then tried the "search for same brick" link that appears, but it still only shows no. 4- I would have expected it to show no. 2 as well.
And, even when clicking reset, clearing the field etc there seems to be no obvious way to clear everything and get back to the top level menu with no filters or anything applied- it still just showed me horses...
...and none of them were dark orange. So I am still none the wiser

I've also just noticed THERE ARE GOATS
(but only brown ones)
(and no sloths)

@Huw said:
"
That'll be because different printed pieces have different design IDs, even if they are based on the same part and I suspect 'search for same brick' looks for parts with the same design ID.
"
Fair point. I think an ordinary user would still expect both to be shown. Do most normal people know what design ids are?
Also, there is another piece called "foal". I would kind of expect that to be shown if I search for "horse", too. At the moment it looks like the site is a few fields short of a search engine.

Of course this happens one day after I order £300+ of minifig parts. All the ones I've checked are now cheaper. Good work, me.

@EvilTwin said:
" @Huw said:
"
That'll be because different printed pieces have different design IDs, even if they are based on the same part and I suspect 'search for same brick' looks for parts with the same design ID.
"
Fair point. I think an ordinary user would still expect both to be shown. Do most normal people know what design ids are?
Also, there is another piece called "foal". I would kind of expect that to be shown if I search for "horse", too. At the moment it looks like the site is a few fields short of a search engine.
"
Both PAB and BNP have always been a little laborious to search. And it appears that this first phase won't immediately include any logic or AI updates.

For PAB historically, there were never too many parts so I usually sidestepped the categories completely and literally just looked at each page one by one.

For BNP historically, I basically built a giant Design ID cheat sheet and organized it by tiles, plates, baseplates, connectors, food, animals, odds/ends, etc. And every once in a while, I would have to add another Design ID for the what appeared to be the same item (like 1x2 tiles via 3069 or 35386). Design ID's are great in that they helped show me what colors each piece may be possible, though some colors never come back in stock. But for occasional odd parts like some animals, each color variant had its own Design ID for some reason.

Final Element IDs provided little/no value to me except when trying to figure out what parts I already have on order. :) @Huw published a great overview on Part Naming/Numbering a while ago, maybe someone can link to it here?

@EvilTwin said:
" @Huw said:
"
That'll be because different printed pieces have different design IDs, even if they are based on the same part and I suspect 'search for same brick' looks for parts with the same design ID.
"
Fair point. I think an ordinary user would still expect both to be shown. Do most normal people know what design ids are?
Also, there is another piece called "foal". I would kind of expect that to be shown if I search for "horse", too. At the moment it looks like the site is a few fields short of a search engine.
"

If by 'most normal people' you mean those that look at the parts list at the end of the set instructions, then yes they would know there are id numbers associated with the parts.

@Andhe:
I’ve seen several instances where people said they would just add a single piece to their cart to trigger a GWP or free shipping. That single piece ships by itself, with the labor associated with picking and packing it, plus postage (or equivalent) for a mostly empty package. I’m sure they were losing a lot of money on this practice, and imposing a minimum seems like a sensible way for them to discourage it.

@Andhe:
They previously said orders would ship from two different locations, depending on whether you ordered from the PAB selection or B&P group, and that you’d be able to tell the difference between each group of parts. Now they’re saying you can pick which warehouse they come from, which has me curious. Obviously you can’t choose to receive B&P parts from a warehouse that doesn’t stock them, but maybe you can opt to downgrade PAB parts to B&P so you’re only receiving one order instead of two?

@darkstonegrey:
Have you tried adding “-Duplo” as a search string?

@jonkoloris:
Oof. Good thing I ordered eight last year to go with the dozen I got from buying Santa’s Sleigh sets (though I will have to give one up).

@HOBBES:
PAB was set up to be exactly what it was, which is a way to bulk-order parts. Selection was meager, and the interface wasn’t great, but it was exactly what was promised. B&P was set up as a way to automate requests to replace lost, missing, or broken parts, but it didn’t take long for people to figure out you could just ask for free parts this way, and it was really the only way you could access parts that didn’t also show up on PAB. So they let people start buying them also. What it sounds like they’re doing now is taking the B&P purchasing and shifting it away from the replacement parts system to the PAB system instead. Ironically, they’re still going to have issues with people who know how to find one system but not both. Half of them are going to be surprised at how much the selection has increased, and the other half will be pissed because they can’t just buy the parts anymore. Nothing about this inherently teaches people how to find both systems (though a lot of people do seem to have learned that there are two systems by reading the articles and comments).

@durazno33:
Are you searching the US site, or the UK site? It hasn’t gone life in the US yet, so all you should be seeing here is that B&P selection is dwindling as they port each part over to the new system. Once they’re done, and they have PAB stock in hand in the US, we should get access to the new combined ordering system.

@Coconapple Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to folks’ input on the Bricks & Pieces/Pick a Brick merger and associated user experience. Might I suggest also checking out the “Bricks and Pieces parts availability” Discord server if you haven’t already? It probably has the largest concentrated group of regular Bricks & Pieces/Pick a Brick users (500+), and as such there’s been a lot of productive discussion about the overhaul and what changes people feel it needs, that may be of interest to the team.

Of course Australia gets left out as usual.

It looks like you can't select or discard all Duplo pieces. Sometimes, if you don't pay close attention, you can mix system elements and duplo elements, if just looking at the small picture. And there is no information provided about it when you click on the element to get more pieces of information.

@Coconapple said:
"Already seeing some great feedback on this release! Thanks for taking the time to leave your comments here. Rest assured we (PAB engineering team) are reading them and already discussing things like further improving the search functionality and out of stock bricks!"

Can you fix the weird price jumps on bricks like the Dk orange horse? that's so cool you're on the team though :)

@PurpleDave said:
" @darkstonegrey:
Have you tried adding “-Duplo” as a search string?"

That gives you ONLY duplo, I want a choice to filter OUT any duplo so those parts do NOT appear.

That works great tho if all you want to see is Duplo or Technic parts (I'd definitely use that when wanting to restrict the lists to just technic).

@Coconapple

1) Bricks&Pieces Interface > Pick A Brick Interface

2) Make it cheaper, Lego is already too expensive. If there's a minimum buy and you're increasing the shipping costs, the individual pieces should cost less.

3) HOBBES' comment is the best one so far.

4) Oh, and for the love of god tell whoever is in charge of the molding machines that 6x12 plates have not been straight (properly flat) for the last 5 years minimum. Fix this. The automated "broken parts" online customer service has rejected each of my (about 7 or 8) appeals on this subject, but there's a messed up, useless plate in every second set I buy. Fix this.

@darkstonegrey:
Not “Duplo”. “-Duplo”. Adding a minus sign in front of a search term _usually_ gives you back results that exclude that term. Or are you saying they failed to program that in? That would really suck. I use negative search terms all the time on Bricklink, like “-sticker -stickers” to weed out any stickered prints, or “-glasses -sunglasses” to reduce the pool of minifig heads to those with no eyewear.

Of course, sometimes you run into really janky search functions, like one that I’ve encountered where they suggest you narrow your search by adding more terms, but in reality it just increases your results exponentially. This search function would return everything with search term A, plus everything with search term B, plus everything with search term C, instead of limiting your results to everything that includes search terms A, B, and C combined.

@TeriXeri said:
"First I was thinking : " Alright, free shipping above €12"

Then in reality, you add it to the main cart and still have to have €55 to avoid €6 shipping."
So they've added a service fee for orders below a certain threshold, shipping is many times higher than before and the price for lots of parts have gone up.

I'm glad I live in Sweden where Bricks & Pieces still won't change for a few months, the longer wait the better.

WRT out-of-stock parts, I dont think either system has handled them well. The old Bricks and Pieces system showed parts in colours that have been out of production for over a decade, like stuff that very obviously will never be in stock again (and even when they do come back, like teal, its with new element IDs so it gets a new listing anyway). Obviously hiding all out-of-stock parts is worse but the old system wasnt perfect either.

I remain curious if this merge will impact the retrieval of set inventories for Brickset.

@Ephseb said:
" @Coconapple

1) Bricks&Pieces Interface > Pick A Brick Interface

2) Make it cheaper, Lego is already too expensive. If there's a minimum buy and you're increasing the shipping costs, the individual pieces should cost less.

3) HOBBES' comment is the best one so far.

4) Oh, and for the love of god tell whoever is in charge of the molding machines that 6x12 plates have not been straight (properly flat) for the last 5 years minimum. Fix this. The automated "broken parts" online customer service has rejected each of my (about 7 or 8) appeals on this subject, but there's a messed up, useless plate in every second set I buy. Fix this."

Oh, is that why my Crocodile Locomotive stand doesn't sit flat?

Double service fees. No separation of Friends and normal minifigures, also no distinction between Duplo and Lego parts. Unavailable parts are not displayed. Previously the stock was displayed up to 200 pieces, now the stock display is completely missing. Really a cheek are the abnormal exaggerated price increases for the animals.

@Huw said:
" @maniac said:
"Would be great if we could choose to return more elements per page. "

An option to show all of them would be most useful.

@Coconapple , thanks for your input here. You mentioned in the comments to the announcement article that the replacement parts service not being changed. Is that going to be the case for the forseeable future?

"

Nothing planned on our back log for the foreseeable future no. :)

@ProfessorBrickkeeper said:
" @Coconapple Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to folks’ input on the Bricks & Pieces/Pick a Brick merger and associated user experience. Might I suggest also checking out the “Bricks and Pieces parts availability” Discord server if you haven’t already? It probably has the largest concentrated group of regular Bricks & Pieces/Pick a Brick users (500+), and as such there’s been a lot of productive discussion about the overhaul and what changes people feel it needs, that may be of interest to the team."

No problem! We value the feedback as a gift! :)

Thanks for the tip on the Discord server. I'll be sure to check that out.

@BurritoBricks said:
" @Coconapple said:
"Already seeing some great feedback on this release! Thanks for taking the time to leave your comments here. Rest assured we (PAB engineering team) are reading them and already discussing things like further improving the search functionality and out of stock bricks!"

Can you fix the weird price jumps on bricks like the Dk orange horse? that's so cool you're on the team though :)"

Unfortunately not. :(

As part of the engineering team we have to control over the prices. But maybe if we implement some of the quality of life suggestions here the hikes will sting a little less. :)

@Ephseb said:
" @Coconapple

1) Bricks&Pieces Interface > Pick A Brick Interface

2) Make it cheaper, Lego is already too expensive. If there's a minimum buy and you're increasing the shipping costs, the individual pieces should cost less.

3) HOBBES' comment is the best one so far.

4) Oh, and for the love of god tell whoever is in charge of the molding machines that 6x12 plates have not been straight (properly flat) for the last 5 years minimum. Fix this. The automated "broken parts" online customer service has rejected each of my (about 7 or 8) appeals on this subject, but there's a messed up, useless plate in every second set I buy. Fix this."

I hear you. And appreciate your frustrations over bendy plates. :(

Interested in what it is that you prefer from the Bricks & Pieces interface? Maybe there is something we can improve?

@Anonym said:
"The Pick-a-Brick interface is better. You can actually search for words and come up with for example every minifig head, printed and unprinted. Though this is not a real improvement since I have been using the Brickhunter broswer add-on for a year and it is still better organized, like differentiating between minifig and minidoll parts.

There is a certain irony in it now that I will probably not order any PaB/Bestseller parts anymore because I refuse to pay service fees and will probably never reach the 12 euro threshold. The threshold for the fees at least doesn't impact by Bricks&Pieces buying habits. Eventually there will be enough pieces to fill a 55€ baket with.

They already lied:

"In the past, different colours of the same design often had different prices. Now the prices will be more consistent, with some exceptions. Certain colours (like gold and silver), pieces that glow in the dark, and decorated elements will still be priced differently across the same design."

Minifigure leg prices are all over the place. Some of the formerly PAB parts are white legs and dark brown legs. Both have cost 39 cents and now they are 46 for white and 55 for dark brown. There are even more different numbers for the other colors. If anything the prices are even less consistent than before.

I expected a price increase for a longer time, that they were able to offer legs for 39 cents for so many years is remarkable. Though many of the prices are just unreasonable. The prices of animals have always been unreasonable, especially the bigger ones like horses and reindeer. You could get realistically weathered versions oft the same animals for less than Lego asks for. Even before this change the prices on Bricks & Pieces oriented themselves around prices on Bricklink. But Bricklink prices are that way because getting a horse meant to buy a 40$ set just for that one part, maybe a few more, but the rest of the contents being unusable junk for your current projects. The manufacturer can definitely offer these parts for far far less. But now that Lego owns Bricklink they have zero incentives to keep prices low. I see Lego is going the way of Hasbro, pricing out its main clientele of children in favor of chasing the adult market. Segregating children and adult focused products to the point that they are incompatible as has already happened with Modular buildings and City or Star Wars and UCS minifig scale Star Wars.

At first Bricks & Pieces was fun because it gave you a cheap alternative to Bricklink that supported the manufacturer directly yet offered you rare pieces for a reasonable price. This is still sometimes true but it's getting rarer and rarer. It has become corporate and far too profit oriented now. I hear people say the service was basically a charity with it operating so older employees can still work at Lego and parts costing just to cover the expenses of their production. But these stories are obviously imaginary, there is no way that Lego would have operated such a business and even now with all the price increases many parts are still the same price as before. People are deifying the Lego company which gives the company the justification to raise prices to these unreasonable heights. I will definitely look for alternatives now, when not even single parts can be ordered cheaply anymore thanks to the extermination of private sellers on Bricklink and these price increases everywhere. Takes all the fun and ease out of the hobby."

Lol- I really don’t think kids will be priced out by a price increase for minifigure legs on the PaB site. As a kid the replacement parts catalogue fascinated me, but all I ever bought was a replacement sound brick and a random printed parts pack. If I wanted Lego bricks I bought a set.

@Coconapple
For the out of stock items, I think the option to filter them on/off would be ideal. I also think it would be helpful for out of stock items to include a link to the corresponding item in the Bricklink catalog, so buyers can order them there if they don't want to wait for a restock.

It would be great if TLG would find ways to support Bricklink sellers now that they own the platform, and referring business to Bricklink when they are out of stock of certain parts would be a great start. Another would be offering Bricklink sellers wholesale pricing discounts and reseller tax exemption on LEGO.com, but that's a whole different discussion.

@darthmarty said:
" @Coconapple
For the out of stock items, I think the option to filter them on/off would be ideal. I also think it would be helpful for out of stock items to include a link to the corresponding item in the Bricklink catalog, so buyers can order them there if they don't want to wait for a restock.

It would be great if TLG would find ways to support Bricklink sellers now that they own the platform, and referring business to Bricklink when they are out of stock of certain parts would be a great start. Another would be offering Bricklink sellers wholesale pricing discounts and reseller tax exemption on LEGO.com, but that's a whole different discussion."

Out of stock toggle would be great, but that's starting to get super far from the point of Bricklink. What you're describing is Pick a Brick with many extra steps

I recently made an order on the old Pick A Brick. I just did a quick comparison with the prices of the new Pick A Brick. For the items I bought, some have gotten more expensive, some are the same and some are a bit cheaper. On the whole, my order would have been a few percent more expensive if I had made it now.

My use of Pick A Brick will probably not change. It will still be a comparison of prices and availability of each piece between PaB and Bricklink. I don't mind the minimum order limit (had one before anyway) and I'm happy it now all counts towards GWP thresholds.

I do agree with the comments above, that improved search and filter options would be welcome.

@Anonym said:
"Minifigure leg prices are all over the place. Some of the formerly PAB parts are white legs and dark brown legs. Both have cost 39 cents and now they are 46 for white and 55 for dark brown. There are even more different numbers for the other colors. If anything the prices are even less consistent than before."

You think leg prices make no sense? Try this: the sack/bag accessory for minifigures in white has two different codes at two different prices. You can get exactly the same part for more or less money! I discovered that while attempting to place an order yesterday but gave up and placed my order by phone today instead (sans white sack). The part(s) is (are) 'Mini sack with 3.2 shaft' 6377511/17833 and 6307892/10169. They're not particularly expensive but the latter is 10% more. Imagine if my entire order was 10% dearer :~\

It worries me that there may be other parts with two different prices. How does one know which parts have different prices and therefore know to check one is paying the lower price? What a nightmare!

Is anyone having success using the new page in Chrome on a Mac? It wouldn't load at all yesterday, and now it loads but nothing happens when you click on 'Pick'. Nothing's added to your cart.

It works OK in Safari, but Safari is … really not my preferred browser.

Is Chrome just not supported, @Coconapple?

@adamdw said:
"Is anyone having success using the new page in Chrome on a Mac? It wouldn't load at all yesterday, and now it loads but nothing happens when you click on 'Pick'. Nothing's added to your cart.

It works OK in Safari, but Safari is … really not my preferred browser.

Is Chrome just not supported, @Coconapple?"

Chrome most definitely supported. What version and OS are you using? I'll see if I can gather some more data on it.

Fingers crossed this rolls out in the US and other countries soon!

Will this change be applied to other countires in the future as well?
Because from mine first impression it sucks.

@Empdal said:
"Seems like an excuse just to raise prices as well. The 10-15 actuator has gone from 7.70 to 11.05.
Looks like I'll be using Bricklink as much as ever. "

if you like it or not (no one does), but prices have gone up in everything, so no surprise.