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In lugnet.color, Todd Thuma wrote:
> In lugnet.color, John Patterson wrote:
> > What bothers me more is that Lego does not seem to
> > care about or respond to this ongoing problem.
> >
> > John P
>
> John,
>
> What would you like LEGO Group to do about the quality?
That is a silly question. INSIST on quality. Would you buy a car that had
three fenders one shade off from the rest of the car?
Do what they did before, the highest quality in the toy industry. They did it
once, why not put their inspectors in the out sourced Flextronics? It was not a
problem before, Black was black, blue was blue. At one time they did not accept
a 3% varation in color. All of a sudden it is ok? At one time Lego did not
worry about how big the profit was, profit comes to those that do the best job,
not the cheapest. I think that they have cut too many corners. I, for one,
would rather pay a higher cost than buy substandard items. You get what you pay
for.
And why has Lego never responded to this? They ignore the problem as far as I
can tell. Not very good customer relations, but that is slowly slipping too.
They no longer
> manufacture plastic parts. They have contracted with a third party to
> manufacture parts who would try to pass as many parts as they can. LEGO might,
> by contract, be obliged to allow certain percentage of less than acceptable
> parts to pass. Not to mention that parts are being made in 3 countries by
> companies not accustomed to LEGO's high level of quality.
>
> Ultimately, I think there is a decision we all have to make. Do we continue to
> be surprised that color variations are occuring or do we prefer to pay more for
> elements so that the quality control standards can be upheld? I belive that if
> we wish to keep LEGO elements at the current price, then we must accept a
> certain level of variation within color. I do not believe we should put up with
> shape variations or parts that no longer fit, but we must accept some color
> variance.
At one time there was no color variance. Now some is ok?
>
> LEGO can continue to maintain the quality and color consistency and let the
> costs of the elements go beyond the price parents are willing to pay. Or, LEGO
> can let colors vary slightly in order to keep costs down. This is clearly an
> either or choice and both cannot be accomodated.
.
Sorry, I prefer quality. That is why I collect Lego and not Mega Blocks
>
> Todd
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In lugnet.color, John Patterson wrote:
> Do what they did before, the highest quality in the toy industry. They did
> it once, why not put their inspectors in the out sourced Flextronics? It was
> not a problem before, Black was black, blue was blue. At one time they did
> not accept a 3% varation in color. All of a sudden it is ok?
Yes.
I wish I had the article I'm thinking of-- I'll hunt for it. But according to
Jorgen, people at Lego were using quality 'as a crutch'. They refused to do any
cost saving measure because it might sacrifice quality. And supposedly it was
making the company sort of stuck backwards in time, rather than being a modern
company. The company couldn't afford to continue producing super high quality
elements, or it would go bankrupt.
Or, that seems to be their opinion anyway. I'm continually interested in how
Playmobil survives, as its level of quality seems not to have dwindled at all,
yet they seem to get on just fine, and hit a similar target audience.
> I, for one, would rather pay a higher cost than buy substandard items.
As would I. But fat chance that the people willing to do this can convince Lego
to sell super-high quality stuff again.
> And why has Lego never responded to this? They ignore the problem as far as
> I can tell.
You haven't been looking too hard, I guess. They've been talking about this for
the past few years now, but they don't go shouting it from rooftops that their
quality dropped in order to become profitable again. They mostly just focus on
the "profitable" part within press releases and such, but they've acknowledged
the drop in quality if you read carefully and between the lines.
> Not very good customer relations, but that is slowly slipping too.
If you were Lego, would you announce to the world that you were lowering your
standards? I wouldn't. Not that I'd want to lower my standards, of course, but
they're handling it exactly as you'd think they would.
> Sorry, I prefer quality. That is why I collect Lego and not Mega Blocks
Lego's still higher quality than MegaBloks, but I'm not sure it's much higher.
Mostly, I tend to feel that one of Lego's present strengths over MB is its set
design and element distribution. Many of MB's sets are far more juniorized than
the worst-of-the-worst Lego sets. Not that MB doesn't have some decent models
(they do), but generally it seems that Lego is better about those things.
DaveE
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In lugnet.color, David Eaton wrote:
> I wish I had the article I'm thinking of-- I'll hunt for it.
Here we go:
http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/07306?gko=db087&tid=230&pg=all
DaveE
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