CONFIRMEDBAM’s operations manual, which the company swore under oath is genuine, and the store’s own public Google reviews, quoted below unchanged
This is the plain-language version of the cited update, written to be read out loud. BAM’s own words are quoted below, unchanged.
In August, a young man, who is autistic, took five of his own LEGO sets into a Bricks and Minifigs store in Tucson to sell them for his eighteenth birthday. Three of them were worth close to a thousand dollars. The store offered one hundred sixteen dollars for the whole lot, and said the number was low because the sets were dusty. He and his mother, who came with him to be sure he was treated fairly, left, and a different store offered five hundred dollars for them the same afternoon. Then, a few days later, the first store sent the young man a text message. It said he had earned twenty-five dollars in rewards, and told him to come in and use them, in its words, before they get lonely.
In a store rewards program, you earn one point for every dollar you spend. The text said the young man had five hundred twenty-eight points. That is the record of about five hundred dollars of shopping. But his family says they were in that store one time, the day of the low offer, and spent about two hundred dollars, on SpongeBob minifigures, because it was his birthday. So the store’s two machines gave two numbers that do not fit one visit. The buying machine said his LEGO was worth one hundred sixteen dollars. The rewards machine said he had spent five hundred twenty-eight. Neither one matches a single two-hundred-dollar afternoon. Whether anyone typed in extra points by hand, no one outside the store can say, and we do not.
This was not the first time. Read the store’s own Google reviews and the same complaint comes back for years, from people who have nothing to do with each other. One says the prices are far too high. One says the man who buys your LEGO seems to be looking for the lowest price he can offer, that you get ripped off, and that you are better off selling on Facebook. One says another store nearby sells the same pieces for about half the price. Those reviews are still there to read.
BAM’s manual, the one it swore under oath is real, tells its stores what to do about reviews like these. It says to move the conversation offline, by sending the customer to call or email instead. It says to watch for repeat complainers, and to consider deleting them. And in the part about buying, it admits that turning down a customer’s LEGO can make them leave a bad review that hurts the brand. So the company knows the way it buys creates the complaints, and it hands every store a way to move them out of sight. Under most of the bad reviews, the owner answers with the same few lines: sorry it was less than five stars, please reach out to us directly by email, we try to be competitively priced, it is about bringing joy and creativity to kids of all ages.
The young man’s mother came with him to make sure he was treated fairly. BAM’s manual has advice for exactly that. It tells the person at the counter that mothers are usually more sentimental, to watch for sentimental parents who make the buying a little tougher, and to get the mother to see into the future so the collection goes across the counter anyway. In the manual, the parent who came to protect her son is a roadblock to work around.
The mother’s answer to the rewards text was short. She is not going back into that store, and neither is her son. In her words, I think they are just trying to lure us back in. They stayed home.
The store is on Broadway in Tucson, run by a couple named the Burnetts, who by most accounts run a friendly, well-liked shop. The point is not that they are bad people. The one-hundred-sixteen-dollar number did not come from their hearts. It came from a spreadsheet that every Bricks and Minifigs store runs, and the same company writes the buying tool, the manual, and the rewards texts. A store people love and a store nobody likes, running the same machine, can hand out the same low offer. And BAM’s own buying records, which it left sitting on the open internet, show worse: one collection worth over a thousand dollars was bought for twenty-eight.
This site is independent. It is not owned by, run by, or affiliated with BAM. It quotes BAM’s own tool, BAM’s own manual, and the store’s own reviews the way it quotes all its sources.
This is a plain-language retelling. The text message, the reviews, the exact quotes from BAM’s manual, and the links are in the full update. Nothing here is a finding of law.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; the criminal charges referenced are unadjudicated and every defendant is presumed innocent. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law · Bodycam