If you’ve purchased the LEGO Star Wars UCS Millennium Falcon (75192) before December 31, 2017, you will be eventually getting the black VIP card if you’ve haven’t already. I’ve gotten an update for a reader who emailed in about their experience with LEGO Customer Service about his situation.
It appears there was a glitch in their system with VIPs who have opted out or never consented to physical mailings and their cards weren’t created with the original batch that went out last year. LEGO has since created a new list for those particular VIPs and their cards will be sent out soon.
Also, the rep also stated that any upcoming special promotions that goes with the black VIP card are attached to the VIP account and you don’t actually need to have the physical card on hand. This info is very helpful because I’ve had a lot of questions come in about it.
Hopefully this answers the main questions that have been asked by those who have purchased the UCS Falcon and haven’t gotten their cards yet. Again this only applies to those who got it before last year’s deadline and people who ordered the Falcon after the new year restock will not be getting the card. Thanks to David for emailing in about it.
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The Black VIP card situation was a mess, coupled with the handling/distribution of the Falcon itself.
Interested to see what these promotions are for people who managed to get the set during its limited availability, get the feeling that people will be annoyed given many did not get a chance to get the set during the time frame required due to it not being in stock – an aspect outside their control.
Arguably Lego should have extended the Black VIP card situation given the high demand for the set yet limited availability. It’s very unlikely they gave out all the Black VIP cards, they had a set limit, given the short supply of sets.
Probably the worst handled release of a D2C set that i have ever seen with Lego.
All indications are that they crammed a ton of extra copies through the pipeline just to satisfy their waiting list and get a few to actually land on store shelves before the end of the year/promotion. I have one of the cards in hand right now, and it’s clearly printed to order, so it’s not like they have a stack of unassigned cards sitting around somewhere.
As for what the promos will be, I expect there will be at least one exclusive set of some sort. Maybe just a polybag minifig, or maybe something akin to the Space Slug set. There will almost certainly be some points deals (fixed bonus amounts, point multipliers, etc.) and sale prices, because those are easy to do and doesn’t require tapping into production capacity. There might be some sets that have a VIP Black launch, possibly followed by a general VIP launch, and finally a wide release, because that is also easy to do.
As for worst D2C release, I’m still not sure this quite matches the bungling of some of the later Cuusoo sets like the Mars rover (I _never_ saw this listed as available on S@H or saw a physical copy outside of Brickworld Chicago’s charity auction) or Research Institute (I’m half-convinced the Women of NASA set was accepted by way of apologizing for how hard it was to get hands on a copy).
“so it’s not like they have a stack of unassigned cards sitting around somewhere.”
The remarks made about the cards implied they had a limited stock of the VIP cards. This was even listed ‘while stocks last’ in regards to the cards on the site during the time they were available hinting they may run out of cards prior to the end of December.
It is entirely possible as such that there are VIP cards still around left non-printed because Lego could not keep up with demand for the set during the time the promotion was available.
“I’m still not sure this quite matches the bungling of some of the later Cuusoo sets”
The time constraint for me is what makes this one more of an issue – the other sets were difficult to acquire, but none of the others had a time limit on when you got a rare promotional aspect you could only get via purchasing the set.
Plus it was not an ideas set but an official set – they should know Star Wars sets sell well so them underestimating the amount of sets needed is a blunder as far as I’m considering of a ridiculous level.
I looked closer at my card just now. It’s kind of a graphite black with the account holder’s name written in white below the minifig in VIP. I therefore thought that the entire card was printed in one go, but now I don’t think that’s the case. I can feel the text of my name, but not the rest of the print on the front of the card. I can feel the print of the barcode on the back, but not the rest of the print on that side. So, it does appear like they might have had a stack of generic VIP Black cards and just printed the personal details on them afterwards.
As for that last bit, marketing has been a bit gun-shy with large SW sets. I don’t remember if there was any issue with the UCS ISD, the first $300 set ever released, but the first UCS Falcon has a pre-order discount dropping it from $500 to $400, which was then followed by a “1st Edition” box and CoA. I can’t think of any other set that has had a pre-order discount, and the only other set I can think of that might have a CoA is the limited run of the Santa Fe. They’ve released, and re-released, a set that was about 20% bigger, but the price was only $300 like many of the previous UCS SW sets. This set once again raises the bar another 20% in terms of piece count, but the price is at least double any sets I can think of besides the first UCS MF and the current Death Star playset. If they had gradually worked their way up to that level, nobody probably would have batted an eye, but this is like buying the previous Falcon with the UCS ISD on the same receipt. Yeah, it’s SW, and yeah, it had a huge amount of buzz leading up to release, but a lot of that included a mix of “too rich for my blood” and “overpriced”.
I had the case, where my VIP-Card ended up with a wrong name, because after the Falcon, I had an order to a different adress. That alternative adress however has stayed permanently in the system.
backordered the UCS MF on release day, the black vip card was delivered Jan 5, so, if people bought one just before the end of the year, they may be waiting some time to get their black card in the mail (mail is going out of Hungary)
I bought mine on release day, and got my card the same day as yours. However, I know for a fact that my account was affected by this “opt-out” problem, so I could have had it a lot earlier if that had not been the case. They were promised by the end of November, so I called S@H in early December to ask about it.
I also didn’t get my card that was “supposed” to be here by the end of November. I emailed them recently and they didn’t tell me about the error, but good to know that is the case and they will be correcting it.
I emailed Lego customer service asking if the Black vip card would still be available in 2018 and the reply was no it would not be extended. This was from a week ago…..