I've slowly been building the Sea Cow with my sons and when we got to bag 7 (well, bagS 7 since there are 3 of them) we discovered a huge number of pieces missing -- many dozens of them aren't there. Far too many pieces and too many pages of instructions to work out exactly what is missing but it was a surprising amount. No damage to the bags or the box and I bought it straight from my local LEGO store so it must have been a manufacturing error.
I assumed it was just one of the smaller sub-bags that got left out but after some time on the phone with LEGO customer support we worked out that it wasn't any particular bag, it was just a huge number of pieces from all 3 of the bag 7s. Really strange. Good news is they're simply sending me 3 new bag 7s so I can finish the build (and she even tacked on some free VIP points as a goodwill gesture).
The CSR said she hadn't heard of any other reports of Sea Cows with missing pieces but I thought I'd ask the folks here. It also occurred to me that this is the sort of thing that could really suck for any resellers that grabbed some of these for resale years later. It doesn't look like I got any extra pieces in my set so I assume it was underweight and somehow got missed at the factory. Maybe anyone not planning on opening theirs soon should find out what the sealed box is supposed to weigh and check theirs.
TL;DR: LEGO is awesome because they're replacing all the missing pieces without complaint.
I assumed it was just one of the smaller sub-bags that got left out but after some time on the phone with LEGO customer support we worked out that it wasn't any particular bag, it was just a huge number of pieces from all 3 of the bag 7s. Really strange. Good news is they're simply sending me 3 new bag 7s so I can finish the build (and she even tacked on some free VIP points as a goodwill gesture).
The CSR said she hadn't heard of any other reports of Sea Cows with missing pieces but I thought I'd ask the folks here. It also occurred to me that this is the sort of thing that could really suck for any resellers that grabbed some of these for resale years later. It doesn't look like I got any extra pieces in my set so I assume it was underweight and somehow got missed at the factory. Maybe anyone not planning on opening theirs soon should find out what the sealed box is supposed to weigh and check theirs.
TL;DR: LEGO is awesome because they're replacing all the missing pieces without complaint.