Quoted from PW79:My Aerosmith arrived with a split cabinet, separating veneers & gouged backbox from bolts being over-torqued. The PF has some issues too.
It has a software bug that carried over from a 2015 game, it can reset at times, it's lacking several very simple programming features (sounds, etc), it's been out for almost a year already & it cost a shit ton of money.
I'm not a Bally/WMS loyalist. 100% of my lineup is Stern. They're my favorite manufacturer. They made good on my cabinet eventually too.
So what does it mean when their target customer, a repeat customer & enthusiast, "complains"?
I don't think that anyone on here would begrudge you for complaining/being upset at the pin you got, and what you went through.
None of us want to deal with quality control issues.
That said, there are so few of these complaints from Stern buyers AND Stern seems to making good on fixing the issues that do occur.
So are we now arguing that "Stern isn't perfect"? Nobody's saying they are. But stating that there are "ongoing quality control issues" is ignorant.
Pinside is apparently a very small demographic of pinball owners, but it seems to be large enough to give us all a good idea of what's happening.
When I find multiple Stern buyers, complaining about physical quality control issues that remain unresolved, I'll reconsider buying from Stern.
Software bugs do and will occur, and in my opinion are no different from incomplete code. If you buy a pin in the early stages, be prepared to put up with that stuff. It's not the end of the world but if it bugs you, you should probably wait until code is complete and bug-free. Buying before then is a risk we all know is part of the game.
I'd love to see a poll of buyers currently suffering from quality issues and who the manufacturer was. Based on the numerous posts for AFM, Alien, Dialed In, I'd say Stern is producing FAR FEWER pins with issues than any of the other makers.
At the end of the day, the best thing about buying new is that the manufacturers all appear to be backing their products, supporting buyers and fixing issues. The chipping playfields and ghosting inserts appear to be the only serious issues that are not being resolved as they're too expense to fix.