This morning was the release of the LEGO Ulysses Space Probe (5006744) on the VIP Rewards Center and to say the least, it was a total disaster. LEGO marketed to be available at a specific time and pretty much all the launches around the world were as terrible as it could get. I knew LEGO IT was bad but this was doubly bad.
From the Terms of Service popup to the Rewards Center maintenance page, these errors didn’t help the situation at all. There are literally thousands of fans waiting to get this very limited set and only a handful of our readers were able to secure one. I posted a simple message on our social media pages at 6:14am PST that it was finally live here in the US and within minutes it was gone. People were hitting the aforementioned TOS and maintenance pages and had to keep refreshing. By the time they got through, it was already out of stock for most people.
It basically was a no-win situation for LEGO as someone will lose and in this case, it was the fans. For it being delayed during the Discovery release was disappointing but having a set time for a release instead of an unannounced drop was probably the nail in the coffin. It wasn’t really a surprise to me as I expected what happened today to happen.
Many took to social media to vent their frustrations and some even took to customer service to give their feedback and it looks like LEGO has released a message regarding the promotion.
“We’re very sorry about your experience with our current VIP promo. We do our best to make sure items like this one are available to as many LEGO® fans as possible, and we know how disappointing it can be when you can’t get the LEGO set that you want. Listening to our fans helps us get better, so thanks for letting us know we got it wrong this time. We’re taking a very close look to see what wasn’t quite right, and I’ve shared your comments with the correct team so we can do better in the future.“
Fans, especially AFOLs, weren’t exactly happy with the LEGO Rewards Center even before today. From rewards that nobody really wants (wallpapers, coloring prints, etc.) to very limited supply of actual rewards that people want (Batcycle, adidas shoes, Ulysses Space Probe), I’m pretty sure that this could be the final straw for some people and will look somewhere else to make their LEGO purchases. Honestly, I would’ve cancelled it altogether to prevent all the negative responses they are getting. Disappointing a small number of people is better than disappointing what could be a significant number of people.
To put more salt on the wound, people who were able to get the Ulysses are now selling orders on the secondary market and they are now selling upwards of $200.
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