I bought my son a new Lego set on my recent trip to Seattle; gifts are a mandatory bribe for the whole family when I go away for twelve days! This time I chose a Technic Dune Buggy (item 8296 for those who follow that kind of thing), which is a smaller version of a set I have had since I was about his age.
Saturday afternoon, we set about building the set together. For a long while, Lego kits would involve Dylan impatiently watching me build, because for him it was mostly about playing with the finished article. More recently though, I have enjoyed getting Lego for him a lot more than I used to. This is because he now has both the dexterity and patience to work through the instructions by himself, with occasional guidance by me as necessary.
He got about half way through construction, and was putting together the assembly that would make the rack and pinion steering. We both searched for a while in the remaining unused pieces for two funky looking Lego bricks that were to hold the wheels in place. Nothing. After 5 minutes, Dylan got bored of looking so I sorted through the remaining pieces one by one to make sure we weren't being silly. Still nothing.
This surprised me - I don't think I have ever had a Lego kit that was missing pieces before. I headed over to the Lego website to see if they had a customer service phone number. I found that they actually had something much better than that, a simple online service! You simply select "I have missing pieces in a new kit" from the options, enter the code number of the set you purchased, and it gives you a list of the pieces that should be in the box including pictures of the pieces. You select how many of each item you need, enter your mailing address and sit back and wait. Genius.
I received a confirmation mail not long after ordering that said "We are sorry to hear that your new LEGO set was incomplete. Our production checks are rigorous. We even weigh the boxes electronically before they're shipped to check that there's nothing missing. However, from time to time one or two pieces can be missing from a set, and of course we're happy to replace them immediately".
I love it when a company makes it ridiculously simple to deal with simple enquiries. Good stuff Lego.
