Subject:
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Re: The Knight Bus problem
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.color
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Date:
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Sat, 15 May 2004 02:32:12 GMT
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Viewed:
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1967 times
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In lugnet.color, Christian Treczoks wrote:
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Martin Bruun wrote:
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What makes you think, that a company with an equity of about 950
million US$ couldn’t afford to scrap a set?
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Maybe because it would cost money they currently don’t have? Have you
followed the news about Legos financial situation or the massive layoffs
recently?
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Yea. It is sad. But it is also a reason to try and step up support. They are
really one of the few companies that are trying to get it right, rather than
just pandering to us and (more strongly) our children. And by us, I don’t mean
AFOLs, but rather a culture as a whole.
So lets help them get through this, which may mean finding the little silver
linings around all of the problems. For me, it was in the post above that said
Lego was evaluating their manufacturing proceedures and set design proceedures
in order to try and prevent this level of variation.
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The question is whether it would be a wise thing to do. You are
probably right, that they can’t produce an improved Knight Bus in
time for the film. And I beliewe they are right when they say, that
the color mismatch in the Knight Bus doesn’t matter much to most
kids.
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Maybe some kids don’t. But the set makes Lego look cheap as in “cheap
clone from china” - and even the chinese clone makers sets are better
than that. This might or might not noticed by parents, who might or
might not think twice the next time they spend US$30 on a toy.
Point is, that the way above market average prices of Lego sets have
been justified in the past with a superior quality of the product. If
they fail to reach that mark *and* the customers notice that, they can’t
stick to those prices anymore. And this will hurt badly.
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This is a good point, as it is probably the source of much of the community’s
anger. We are paying a premium for quality. Quality in manufacture, Quality in
Design, and Quality in educational value. That is what a toy is supposed to be,
really, an educational aid for children. Otherwise we are just providing them
with too much leisure. :)
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Sorry I don’t see any desperation and where do they say children are
stupid and colorblind?
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To quote the text from Lego Billund: “...the colour variation
does not play an important role to children...”. OK, admittedly, they
did not write that kids are stupid or colourblind. But they act as if
they were.
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Its not that kids are stupid, or colorblind. Its that it isn’t important to
them. A lot of kids don’t have the luxury of getting more than a tin can full
of bricks, so they naturally build without color in mind. Even besides that,
kids are not expert modellers. They might mix red and blue in the same model --
right next to each other! (That can give you a headache.)
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Ok, so 165 employees in customer service, TLC’s active support and
participation in fan created events and a dedicated team in community
development is “active disinterest”
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There are different levels of customer contact.
There are the call centers who take care of minor problems like the
increasing number of complains about missing or damaged pieces. This is
ok, as mistakes and accidents can happen with any product, and they have
to take care of this anyway. Their big problem is that they are getting
worse at the moment: people who contacted Lego support about the knight
bus have been replied to with standard letters about the grey and brown
colour change. Go figure.
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So, I think you are generalizing here without any actual data. As I said in the
post starting the thread, no one had called Lego Consumer Affairs about this
problem. My experience was very positive. They were not only trying to help,
they admitted that it looked odd to them. No one from CA has mentioned the new
greys in relation to this issue. Sure, we got the variance was within tolerance
explanation, but what do you expect? The world isn’t perfect, at least they are
trying.
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This support and participation in fan created events has happened twice
in Europe so far (IIRC), and the one event I had the chance to
participate did not really yield that much. They put up some
Winni-The-Poo and other figurines for free, the had a building table for
the kids and a room for themselves where they exhibited a few of the
current sets. Yes, there was a Q&A that did help as much as discussing
with Jake (“I can’t talk about it”, “You’ll love it” and “I don’t
know” were the predominant answers). If I take into account that the
whole rest of the event was done, managed and paid by fans and visitors,
they had a big case of dirt cheap advertising with all that. In total,
the event support happens - as far as I can derive from the net - more
or less exclusively in the US, anyway.
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Look. Lego doesn’t have to do anything with community development. In a very
real sense, they could just make their product and not get actively involved
with our events, and to some that may seem to be a safer path. Sure, they
should listen to our complaints--that is good business. They should also listen
to our suggestions--that is good market research. But they could do that
silently enough, reading Lugnet posts and such, with out engaging us in
conversation.
Your ire is just making the case for those that beleive they should not get
involved. Everything that they try to do is looked upon as done poorly by
people like you. The fact that they have done anything at all should be
praised! Maybe you don’t get to personally benefit from some of the things the
company does for the community. That doesn’t mean they don’t want you to
benefit.. but they have to make some economic decisions, too. To mee it sounds
petty and jealous for you to complain that they don’t serve you enough.
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And for community development - even those community developers have to
admit that their stand within the company is so weak that it is better
to contact the call centers about the problems that irk us. We were
lucky to do a bulk order at Lego last spring via Community Development.
But: The bricks have been paid for somewhere last summer, and i’m still
waiting for the last bricks (no, nothing exotic, just a few hundred red
slopes 45 2x2 double convex in red). Anything else of the job seems to
be a kind of company spokesperson stuff. The new guy in Europe for
example has so far only posted translations of Jakes Lugnet postings,
and has joined the chat a few times. Yes, he is new, but so far his
visibility is extremely low. Even some of the more patient members have
raised the question whether he was only hired as a translator. I
sincerely hope that he gets better than that in the future.
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I think if Jake’s stand within the company were weak, then he would have been
fired long ago. The fact is there are people in the company who value his
opinion. There are also, I am sure, people who disagree with him and the role
of community development. He has to constantly convince them that we are worth
listening to, and it seems that he is winning them over--though slowly. What
can you expect in such a short time. People are fond of saying how long Lego
has been making light grey--30 years. But in that time they have only have a
community development manager for what, 2? In fact, this community was tiny
just before 1999 when Lugnet and Star Wars Lego were starting this explosion of
online interest in lego.
Give them time. Take a deep breath. They are trying to learn, but don’t expect
change to happen so quickly. Big organizations take a long time to change.
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Until now, the CD persons only started to react when the noise went up
considerabely, but - as Jake admitted - way too late to change anything.
And their “Great Achievements” with legend sets and similar were (IMHO)
not that impressive, either.
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Well, IMHO your dead wrong. The legends are awesome. it is just what everyone
here is crying for.. bring back the sets of the 80’s and early 90’s. Well, they
are doing it. Maybe they didn’t bring back your favorite set, yet. Again,
this sounds petty.
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You have to explain what the term “active interest” would be then.
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Well, so far I have not seen CD reactions to the knight bus problem or
the other quality issues that came up in the recent months like the
question about different height of plates, and such. This is one
of the areas where they should be way more active. Maybe Jakes “Top
Secret” project is something that is intended to really help us, but the
way he communicated it simply sucks, and the outcome is undetermined.
What I expect from a community contact person is proactive communcation
and action, i.e. when people started to discuss about the knight bus
problem, and it became an issue that was not limited to a few sets, I
would expect such a contact to respond to this, even if it is only a
note along the lines of “OK, I noticed that you see this as a problem,
I’ll see what the stuff is all about.”. Jake or whoever could easily
order such a set internally and see that the problem is real, find the
person responsible for these quality issues and talk to him/her. This
would be a prime example of “active interest”. This did not happen.
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That would be above and beyond the call of duty. If we as a group were able to
do the following things, then we might deserve this kind of attention: -
Agree, as a group, on how we feel about lego policies - Act, as a group, in a
consistent way with respect to buying - Purchase in the tens of millions of
lego sets each year
As it is, we’re getting darn near close to this kind of attention, and while I
believe that we may be more than 5-10% of Lego’s market, that still doesn’t put
us on par with Target and Walmart, who I am sure, get a lot of attention. Hey,
even local toy stores haven’t gotten the kind of attention we have gotten from
Lego (last I knew). So, I think your asking for a bit much.
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Agreed they have made great stuff in the past, not like those crappy
Santa Fe trains, UCS sets, sculptures and Designer sets they make
now... right..
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Not that I’m really impressed by them. There have been the two
outstanding sets so far (Siskinds Smithy and those Santa Fe waggons,
both AFOL designs, not from Lego!),
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So you blame lego for taking a risk and using the community for designs? This
is in poor taste. They really did this in order to work with the community
actively. I see no other reason for it, especially since they have thier own
design team. They could have produced Santa Fe train cars or a blacksmith shop
without paying to use the MOC designs. And sure, these were great sellers for
Lego Direct, but the fact that they made some money off of it (and who knows if
they recouped thier costs on these projects--even if they sold a bunch)
shouldn’t justify you criticizing them for doing it. Especially when what you
want is more active involvement from them!
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and a lot of unsolved quality issues
with the sets (bending parts, bad engineering, non-adhering stickers,
and more). Nontheless, I was talking about those sets that can actually
be bought in real shops, and this is where it becomes a real horror
show. The new Knights Kingdom eases the pain about bley insofar as the
sets were not purchase-worthy anyway by their overall design. If that
design was even acceptable, I would have been torn between my urge to
collect the new castle sets and the decision not to buy bley sets.
Luckily, I’m not. The Lego world police state sets is nothing I would
buy for my kid for paedagigical reasons from the very beginning.
Bionicle ist the same, a trading card ripoff put in plastic.
The only big plus so far (although I don’t know if this was due to
community development or not) are the PAB shops, even though their
selection and pricing is more or less abysmal.
Yours, Christian
PS: Yes, I know I’m getting emotional about all this. Both the
companies’ attitude and Jakes way of communicating “great new things”
are really getting on my nerves recently. I promise to go on holidays in
two weeks time and won’t bother you for some days.
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Oh, go and relax, and try and get a more positive attitude. Are you in the
hobby to complain? Probably not. So try not to let these things stress you
out.
-Alfred
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: The Knight Bus problem
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| (...) Maybe because it would cost money they currently don't have? Have you followed the news about Legos financial situation or the massive layoffs recently? (...) Maybe some kids don't. But the set makes Lego look cheap as in "cheap clone from (...) (20 years ago, 14-May-04, to lugnet.color)
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