Birmingham, AL
Quoted from HeighwayPinball:The question about the price increase is a valid one.
Generally speaking, our €EUR and $USD prices are subject to fluctuation on a weekly basis depending on a number of factors - mainly currency exchange rates. We do state this clearly on our Store page. Other factors like shipping rates also factor in.
Our €EUR prices have gone up and down a lot over the last 6 months because of large currency fluctuations, but the $USD price hasn't moved until recently.
The reason for the recent price change, which affected both Standard Edition and Limited Edition variants of both Full Throttle and Alien Pinball, comes down to the cost of producing these machines. As well as the features and innovations packed into our machines, we refuse to compromise on quality. This means that we have expensive machines to produce. Costs of parts can go up which means that we must raise our prices as well, unfortunately.
Saying that, our prices 'could' come down in the future as we buy more parts for less, and more processes are moved in-house.
We want to bring both quality and value to pinball, but it may take a while for costs and prices to settle down. We will always do our best to keep our prices as low as possible.
Regarding the screen upgrades, we announced these here, with links to our store. It's true that some of our Full Throttle customers are only receiving their upgrade option emails now - and we apologise for this delay.
Customers can order and pay for their screen upgrade at any time before shipping, by visiting http://heighwaypinball.com/screen/
I think anyone with some level of investment/stock/currency knowledge have to realize, with a European manufacturer, these currency fluctuations are going to continue to happen. I can't really blame the Heighway guys for adjusting prices accordingly. These guys make pinball machines, no do currency hedging. I will be interested to see how this impacts things the next couple of years. 2 of the brighter currency shops, GS & Deutsche Bank, have the Euro @ .78 & .80 against the dollar for 2017. That's another 30% downward move.
