Uploaded last night at about 1am, with the hopes of announcing this morning. But man, you guys are QUICK Already somebody else had started a thread about it. Well this is my 2 cents to make it "official" :

This new preorder page is about 5 weeks overdue, but we had a bunch of finalizations to finish up that took some time. Now it's ready for the general pinball public to have at it.

The new "look" was meant to clean up the layout so it's easier to understand and follow. We turned the page into three sections, rather than just one. Each section now has a distinct difference from the other. "The Pipe" is finally separated from the pack, so everybody can easily see the 4-5 playfields that we are physically building at any given time. "Standard Preorders" is the group of playfields approved for CPR assignment, following our original traditional Inbox method of placing your preorder. "The Boutique Zone" is a new section that reveals off-the-beaten-path playfield candidates that we MIGHT consider for preorders/production IF we get a good measure of decent demand. We have the artwork, so why not put them up and let the hobby tell US if they are worth bringing to the front burner.

As you can tell, a whole slew of new Inboxes opened up. These represent the updated 2016-2017 production schedule that we hope to achieve. So now you foresee where we are headed, and sign up for orders accordingly. There are several titles on there that people had been wondering about, or beating the table for.

http://www.classicplayfields.com/order.html

preordercolorcodes_(resized).jpg

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Yes correct. Autoresponder texts were updated with the update of the page. Now they also explain cancellation procedure, just so nobody can say they didn't know how to undo their preorder.

The Centaur and Fathom small-runs didn't have autoresponders turned on, as they were slam-bam-quick and over in 3 days. In fact, many of our old 2014-2015 Inboxes had autoresponders turned off. It was because the autoresponders were somehow getting us in trouble with several ISPs in the USA, and triggering IP bans from up here in Canada. When it came time to send out instructions, several guys' emails would bounce with warnings coming back that our ISP was on their blacklist. We assumed the autoresponders were being considered computer-generated spam, so we started with experimenting with stopping their usage to see if it helped. Still undertermined.

So we're back to autoresponders on ALL the inboxes, and we'll see how it goes.

Basic rule of email - if it didn't bounce, it landed.

We still have all those emails from 2012-2014 from all those old Inboxes. The problem is, they were all under the "old system" where nobody was obligated to buy the playfields. Which we've had horrible luck with the last year or so. Get 80 preorders, make ~80 playfields, and only 40 guys buy. Run after run they start to build up. Waste of time and capital and space. There is no way we can consider a casual no-rules raised hand in 2012 to be a committed buyer we can count on in 2016. So with the launch of these new Inboxes, we'd like to see a fresh join, and a true commitment placed - so we can truly count ACTUAL orders and know how many to produce.

So for some of these old back-burnered runs from 2-4 years ago that had disappeared, we ask everybody to re-submit a fresh 2016 commitment.

It's not a system that's going to guarantee scrubs who bail at the end are 100% eliminated... but it's going to be close. Just like the reduction in shoplifting via security scanners at the exits of a store... there WILL STILL be people who dare to get stolen merchandise through and it will ring, but 95% of potential shoplifters will no longer even attempt. We think people will stick to their word, and word is important in this hobby. That's all we ask. We can easily keep a list of abandoners, and they can certainly go the deposit route in the future if that is how they want to interact with CPR preorders... but we assume most will not. It's easy, just commit to yourself to come through, or simply don't preorder. If something changes, cancel before it reaches The Pipe. There will be lots of time.