After weeks, maybe months, of teasing a new LEGO Shop@Home VIP program, LEGO finally launched it sometime this week on Wednesday July 10th. It was presented as offering new exclusives, epic experiences, and more ways to earn points, all under a new Rewards Center experience.

The New Point Structure

When I logged in, my account said I had over 7,000 points. This could be a lifetime cumulative number because I don’t remember having that much before the new program came into being. It’s possible the old points converted to a new point structure to better match against the reward offerings. So if you log on, don’t be surprised if your point total increased by some margin.

Earning points is completely different. A set that costed $19.99 used to earn you 19 VIP points, but now it nets you 130 points. Shop@Home is trying to gamify earning points by offering a small amount by doing simple things like visiting facebook. But that is as far as it goes.

New Exclusives

The first thing I immediately noticed was some art prints. Ever since the LEGO Captain Marvel 1 of 3 art print came out back in May, I’ve been keeping my eye out off and on at LEGO Shop@Home for more promotions. I wanted to complete the set. I was okay with it being a GWP. Buy some LEGO, get some cool art as a bonus automatically.

They also had some of the previous art prints available in black and white only:

What’s concerning is the Endgame print as it looks like it’s part of the series that Captain Marvel started. But I don’t see the color version available in the Rewards Center and never saw it pop up as a GWP promo either. I’ll need to call LEGO Shop@Home after I post this to see what’s up.

Aside from the art prints, there are just some odd things you can redeem points for. Coloring sheets? A Ford keychain? 7-day Xbox game pass? There is the one lone LEGO set but the best thing had to have been the Batpod promotional set that sold out pretty immediately.

Epic Experiences

One positive offering about the VIP points is that you can redeem them for tickets to a LEGOLAND park, a LEGOLAND Discovery Center, or even to The LEGO House in Billund, Denmark. A LEGOLAND California ticket normally runs about $90 if you buy online ahead of your visit. But you can instead redeem 4,000 points for a ticket. Is that worth it? Not entirely sure.

You could spend points for a entry to a “once in a lifetime” trip to LEGOLAND Florida. Each entry costs 100 points. That is definitely not worth it.

Dollar Off Rewards

The core of the previous VIP program was earning points with purchases and then using those points for dollars off your next purchase. It was a simple and super-convenient feature. Upon checkout, you can select any amount of reward to reduce the price. This worked in-store too. I can’t be entirely sure that this worked with phone orders. Well, if you guys like simple things being made more complicated, does Shop@Home have a treat for you!

Look at this confusing mess. So right off the bat you have to figure out where you’re going to place your order. Online? Over the phone? Going to the LEGO store? And then you have to redeem it for the right one voucher.

And the way things are set up now, you can no longer select a dollar amount at checkout at LEGO Shop@Home. I’m assuming this will be the same at stores and that at the register, you won’t be able to redeem points unless you have one of the vouchers from above. It’s a lot of pre-planning to do and I can honestly envision a situation where customers will forego an impulse purchase at a Brand Retail store if they didn’t print out a stupid coupon before hand.

Right off the bat I can tell you that the point conversion from the old valuation to the new isn’t 1:1 with the voucher amounts. I had about $175-$195 in VIP bucks but now that my new point total is a little over 7000, I can only afford a quarter of that in a voucher. I haven’t done the math but I can only hope earning points towards a specific dollar amount can be done at the same rate as before.

So far, I’m not a fan of the new Rewards Center. I can’t imagine that when LEGO says in their promotional emails that they’ve “listened to our VIP members” that these are the things people asked for: Ford keychains, game passes, and confusing as hell dollar off vouchers? I want the old system back.

11 COMMENTS

  1. Well, this sucks. I had no idea the VIP updates they were doing were going to DEVALUE MY POINTS. I’ve got over 14,000 points now, but that still only gets me $100 off, and when I last checked around May I had close to $220 to spend. Was planning to get the Assembly Square with it. All I can say is: shit. I guess it’s my stupid fault for not spending them when I could.

    • Question: did you have a merged account with another VIP card? I think some of my points got dumped back to my wife’s cards and I’m wondering if that was part of the issue. I should have her check her account but it still wouldn’t add up to what I had before they screwed up the program.

      • No merged account that I’m aware of.

        But at the new FAQ site it explains the math of the new dollars=points as well as how the old points were converted to the new points, and with that I can figure out how many old points I had and it does line up with how much credit I had. So I don’t think I’m missing points, LEGO has just lessened the actual buying power points had.

        I sent them an email saying that the newsletters they sent out were misleading, because they used language like “You’ll still be able to get the VIP discounts you enjoy,” which is technically not true if your points are no longer worth the same amount of the discounts, and also saying that they should honor the old points/values people had accrued and only applied the new point system to new purchases. Or at the very least have a grace period for people to use their points at the previous value.

        Because usually when rewards programs change this drastically, they do emails blasts with headlines like “Your points are about to expire!” and that is effectively what happened here, but without clear warning. I can’t use my points the way I did previously, I can only use them to buy vouchers that are now twice as expensive as what my points had been valued at.

        • Thought you should know, emailing customer service about the discrepancy in my point value worked, and they added the points needed to my account to get my previous dollar value back. So if you know what your VIP point balance was before the change, email them and they’ll make up the difference.

          • I called and because I had a merged account with my wife, they split those up and split the points up evenly across both accounts. They can do a points transfer but require my wife to be on the phone with me. So now I have to call back with my wife next to me so she can verify that she is okay transferring her points to my account.

            I wish they gave us an option before they split the merged accounts to retain all points on account or the other. What a headache.

  2. Another anecdote to share.

    I tried redeeming points for a money off coupon code. And also spent a few more to get the color spider-man print. Did you know that there are two different boxes to enter codes? And did you know that they never appear on the screen at the same time? One code you enter, for promotional items, before you enter the checkout process. Cause once you’re in, you can’t enter that code anymore. You’ll have to back all the way out to do it. The other code, discount codes or “money off” codes, have to be entered during the payment step of the checkout process. And it’s not in the same location as the other code field. They’re in two different spots appearing at two different times. It can get pretty confusing.

    Also, my checkout process glitched. I went back to try checking out again only to be told that the discount code I was trying to use had already been redeemed. So I called Shop@Home and they were able to rectify the situation by issuing me the points spent on the discount code so I can redeem them, again, for another discount code.

    LEGO’s customer service is top notch. I’ve never had a complaint with them ever and only have nice things to say. While I was getting my points and discount code straightened out they offered to stay on the phone with me until I completed checkout to make sure it all went smoothly. I will say though that when they asked me if i was sure to put the right codes in the right boxes, I could tell it wasn’t his first time. It was asked so readily and easily that it was apparent that it’s a pretty common issue. Also, I know they listen to feedback and take it very seriously. So when I expressed my dissatisfaction with the new VIP program, the rep said they’ve been getting a lot of similar feedback about that. And then, as if on cue, he began highlighting some of the new offerings that they never had before like the LEGOLAND tickets or the sweepstakes for the trip to LEGOLAND Florida, sounding like a canned response.

    It doesn’t matter what new thing they offer. It’s still lipstick on a pig.

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