Not being sarcastic, just curious whether there's something special about Lego or whether they're just passing along the restrictions imposed by their payment processor.
The baddies out there are numerous, dedicated, highly adaptable, and willing to throw mass volume at a small % opportunity.
The vendor's money would be "clean" from an outsider's perspective.
> We will review this decision regularly, and we hope to be able to reopen the BrickLink Marketplace to LEGO® fans in these countries in the future.
Shutting it down in (almost) the entire South America doesn't feel like it makes financial sense, can't be such a small market that it wouldn't be worth keeping it open.
Is anyone finding relevant political or regulatory patterns in the country list ?
Direct link to the list: https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2687
Doesn't look like anybody can make 35% of their revenue from those countries though, does it.
It's really unfortunate that LEGO acquired Bricklink, and then did this, but it's such a common storyline.
Isn't compatibility a huge part of the draw of Lego?
I've never heard of incompatibilities, what are they?
The only problem I've noticed product wise is there are now mold defects after they started adding recycled plastic, only one or two minor (visual surface) imperfections per box, but before, there were none.
Tons of e-ink spilled over it and some never recovered.
Lots of those pieces look like technics, but aren't.
I don't think LEGO is big in most of those countries (at least not in India), so they might be trying to slow down the secondary market in order to grow sales for new products.
> Ole Kirk Christiansen and his son Godtfred became aware of the Kiddicraft brick after examining a sample, and possibly drawings, given to them by the British supplier of the first injection moulding machine they had purchased. Realising their potential, Ole copied the Kiddicraft brick and in 1949 marketed his own version, The Automatic Binding Brick, that became the Lego brick in 1953.
Thankfully there's many good (and compatible) competitors now, that get you much more bang for the buck. I'm not that deep into LEGO(R), but it feels they have already lost a substantial portion of goodwill in the power user community, which may be contagious. I certainly wouldn't buy or recommend it to anyone anymore (except used perhaps).
> Six years ago, I wrote that it was a terrible idea for LEGO to acquire Bricklink and revisiting some of my thoughts I expressed then, it sure seems like there’s some dodgy stuff happening behind the scenes.
> To be fair, I acknowledge that there may be compliance challenges operating in some of these countries, where things like local laws, logistics, import restrictions etc may make it difficult for LEGO/Bricklink to do their business there, but surely there could’ve been a better way to communicate this, or invite community feedback instead of turning the whole site off in 2 weeks.
I agree that Lego owning BrickLink created a big conflict of interests but there doesn't seem to be anything shady about how they acquired it.
I think the secondary market drives sales. People need to believe that the overpriced sets they are purchasing, never open, and stash in the attic will make them a fortune on the secondary market one day.
"We appreciate your understanding, - The BrickLink Team"
Understanding of what? They didn't describe the situation that lead to their decision to unilaterally apply the same treatment to all of these countries.