Might I suggest that you add to your description "This part comes unpainted just as you see pictured".

My only problem with BAA is the lack of responses to inquiries that I sent them through their site. I asked about availability of the playfield protectors before they had the one for WH2O to see when they would get them. Now that they have them, I asked if the WH2O one came with a piece for the upper playfield. I never got answers to either question but still ordered it from them hoping it would be the same as the set overseas where they are made. Better communication would be my only complaint.

It is the exact same one as over sea's, that's where they get them from. I've ordered four playfield protectors through them and they all still had the "best of pinball" sticker on them.

Im not going to comment on your experience as others seem to have covered everything...I would just like to say that I appreciate there even being repro parts available from some of these distributors, sure the quality is not there but those parts are better than nothing and certainly better than gluing broken parts back together. As these machines get older and more parts break it would be heartbreaking not to be able to get SOMETHING to do a repair with.

You may well not have had the service you wanted but to hang up on somenoe and then have the gall to call THEM rude is a bit rich.

I talked to this parts manager as well over the phone, I believe her name was Lindsay. And I can confirm she is very rude. She talks over you, won't let you get a word in at all and doesn't listen to you, if you do get a chance to say anything. She was the only unpleasant part of my experience with BAA.

Same here all good things with all my orders ,very fast ,fast shipping ,everything very well .sorry for yours ,I guess a bad day

I have never had a problem with them either. Do it all online. Never had a need to ring them.

I made and sold a bunch of these back in '98.

IIRC, the silicon mold was not hard to make and the resin cure took about 2 hours.

Not that hard to do.

I need to give them a thumbs up for shipping speed.

I needed some decals for IJ a few weeks back (I got lucky they had them in stock as they had not been in stock for some time). They had them shipped to Tokyo in less then 2 days from the time I pressed the order button... expensive to ship, but they were quick.

One thing everyone seems to forget about any of the pinball parts suppliers is all of them deal with dozens of customers every day. Occasionally any of us will have a bad day - don't expect anything less when dealing with any supplier or parts source! They are doing the best they can!

Crazy related story but about Pinball Resource. Anyone that has ever bought from them knows when ordering from them it is all about having part numbers. Anyway a couple weeks ago I need up-kick hole parts for a Haunted House machine and I discovered the part numbers on their web site were wrong. So their customer service guy says I need the part numbers and got kind of nasty with me when the part numbers I gave him were wrong. I had just got done telling him there web site had wrong part numbers on it but he said "give them to me anyway".

Next thing you know he gets kind of quiet and thanks me for the order and says we will take care of that right away. I just found it kind of funny the "king of we need part numbers" has part numbers wrong on their web site.

Bottom line is I got my parts and I am happy. Hopefully they fixed their site but I have not taken time to check. Thankfully I had parts catalog with correct part numbers from Gottlieb or I would have never realized the problem was actually their web site.

Ironic quote of the day!

Rick and the crew have been nothing but great for me. I place my orders in the morning and they are ready for pickup a couple of hours later.

That would be so awesome to be able to just go pick up my parts orders.

I like BAA and Marco and kittens and tacos. Nothing but good things to say about all of them, except that sometimes the kittens will eat the tacos.

I live north of the border and I have ordered from BAA more times than probably anyone else. If I was unsure about what i was about to put in my basket on the website then I would simply phone and ask for clarification.

I've always been treated well and been greeted pleasantly and will continue to use BAA as my primary parts provider. (unless they are out of stock on something and I am feeling impatient)

I can only speak from personal experience, but since this thread is about learning from experience I think it's appropriate to weigh in.

If you were unhappy with your purchase and they told you to ram it and refused to refund it, then I could understand the backlash, but that hardly seems to be the case.

I had two instances where I had lengthy interactions with Lindsay by email. First, I emailed a request for pictures of a CSI playfield, to make sure it didn't have the same printing defect as mine did. She took pictures of the areas I was concerned about and emailed them to me. GREAT service.

The second was an issue where Stern mislabeled some ramps, so BAA accidentally shipped me an Avatar ramp instead of IM. Lindsay did all the legwork with Stern to get the problem resolved. All I had to do was ship the Avatar ramp back to Stern using a prepaid shipping sticker.

Great company, great service. If you are polite I think you will find the same to be true.

I've ordered from BAA and was shorted an item once. I notified them by email, received a quick response and received the missing item the next day (helps to live close to them). Thanks BAA!

BAA has always been solid for me........ Nice to see a public response... Got to respect it.

Since I don't have one of these machine, but always hope to grab one, I'm curious what issue there are with the repro. Not painted is something I can easily deal with, but how is the fit and quality of the actual plastic molding?

-Hans

PFFT another complaint thread lol
Well Ive dealt with Marco BAA quite a bit both are good suppliers and ive had pretty much good experiences with both.

Couple times i didnt get a part or so from Marco and they were eager to take of the problem fast with no worries.

BAA has always been great with orders, I had an inquiry on part availability the girl wasnt so pleasant to deal with her answer to everything was to send an email. But sent an email and was answered the same day and the parts were sent out the same week.
Email is the best way to contact them I still value them as a parts provider and will do business with them for years to come. there prices being typicly cheaper than marco and smooth transactions outweigh the chick on the phone.

I would imagine over the course of a year, I easily place better than 100 orders and it involves 10 to 15 vendors. Out of those 100 orders, I may have issues with 4 or 5. And I've had issues with the best of them. BAA, Marco, Pinball Life, Pinrestore, etc., and they all take care of them with minimal pain.

Do I come here and bitch because of the problems? Of course not!! I contact the vendor and the problems are taken care of. Shit happens!! It does with everyone!! I don't care who you are!!

Now if I called a rep of a company, like BAA, and thought I was treated unfairly or rudely, that's different than having my order screwed up. BUT I STILL WOULDN'T COME HERE AND BITCH ABOUT HER. I'd contact Rick and politely let him know. If I were Rick, I'd certainly want to know.

I placed an order with BAA last week and emailed them about it this week. All of my emails from them were marked as Spam by Gmail. It's really unfortunate for them, but I'm not sure what they can do about it.

If you're using email and expecting emails from them, do a search for "bay area amusements in:all" and you might find something you missed.

Did you send an Email or use their help desk? There's a reason companies use something like a help desk ticket system.

I also had an issue with a set of IJ coil wrappers I ordered last week from BAA. The set was missing the flipper coil wrappers. I opened a ticket, heard back the next day saying they were sorry and they'd go out the next day. I received them today.

I used their help desk, and that's how I realized they responded. It was afterwards that I realized I had gotten emails, but they were in my spam folder.

They had a different picture on BAA and it did NOT show the upper playfield one like the other site.

Really? So someone can start yelling at you (which is what the OP stated) and you are going to just take it? I HIGHLY doubt it.

I've dealt with them in the past year and have nothing but praise for them. Including having to return an item that was wired wrong from the factory (Stern). They handled the problem professionally and promptly returned and credited my account.

Their customer service "ticket" system is a little unique but in the end they did right by me. I will gladly buy from them again.

I have had zero problems with BAA however if you spend over 300 bucks on parts or buy a PF you should get the big bag of Jelly Bellys.
That little bag gets you through a small repair but for a PF swap you need the big bag.
Just sayin'

Bwhahahaha! I was wondering if someone would bring that up. I always enjoy the little surprise JellyBelly treat

i'd complain even if i got the big bag, i'd expect at least a 6-pack of a microbrew to get me through a pf swap...

nope, what the op stated was "condescending as hell"...

which ime, often translates into "i didn't get the answer i wanted" or "i didn't get my ass kissed"...

customer was unhappy...
customer contacted customer service...
customer service offered refund (without a fight, from what has been reported)...
customer pressed for a "better answer"...
customer service got a bit annoyed and didn't play "kissy kissy, nicey nicey"...
customer wasn't happy, and decided to come to open forum and gripe about it...
customer didn't get the feedback from that forum that he thought he might get...

I did not say that I would take it. All I said was that he hangs up on her and then calls her rude.

Why come here for a whinge anyway, best to call her boss if he has a problem. And there is always two sides to every story.

I think the point to be taken from this thread is the owner of BAA needs to correct a problem with his lady employee and her customer service skills.

I'm from San jose, and never had bad experience with BAA. Of course, I can pick up my orders directly from their warehouse, which is a real plus

My only "complain" would be their website : if I was a website developer, I would offer them to redo is to be clearer

I agree with this, but I personally would have taken this up with BAA in private. Bringing it out on the forum like this seems a bit premature.

BTW, I never would have bought that Deathstar in the first place. Looks horrible. I'd keep searching for a NOS if possible.

Yes it's true there should have never been a 'calling out' thread made on this. Too much of that going on already.

Were good to me on my order....

My complaint is that the last bag of jelly bellys I got with my BAA order was 80% nasty flavors. This is a travesty!

They are better than the Chinese made melamine laced gummy pizzas and burgers from the other suppliers, they make great mini post rubbers and mods for Creech but you couldn't pay me to eat them.

Hey, it couldn't have been as bad as the gummy pizza and hot dog I got from MAD. I was scared to open it.

Edit: Ha, Tracelifter covered my point while I was typing.

I thought that stuff was free samples of lime disease medication.

I've had great luck with the Jelly Belly selections in my orders so far. Only a couple coconuts and black licorice, the rest all good stuff!

Further, I've spoken with Linsday(sp?) on the phone and in person a few times and she's been quite helpful. Granted, she doesn't have every part for every machine memorized, but that's why there's a website and a computer database(as in THE B/W database, thanks Rick!!).

What? You mean EVERYBODY gets jellybeans?!!! I thought it was just me. I am no longer "Amused"

For what I paid for my parts from MAD, I ate every one of those stupid hot dogs and pizzas. There were like 5 of them.

As a fellow businessman, well done BAA on your trying to fix the problem. (But maybe should have stopped there with the posts. Just my opinion.) Also, it is worth looking over front line people's shoulders from time to time just to make sure employees phone manners are up to par. I have had complaints as well, and actually did find out folks were being treated unprofessionally. (Not saying this was your case!) BUT, those people were shown the door. Sister in law, aunt, mom or whomever.(And I know some people just can't be satisfied, but that is no excuse. "Would you be willing to speak to my supervisor? Perhaps he may better assist you? Not trying tell anyone how to run their business. Just speaking from experience.

Don't get me wrong I love BAA as I stated my good experience with them earlier in this thread. My experience with Lindsay was she was excellent over email yes, she bent over backwards to give me what I thought was fair but over the phone she over talked me, wouldn't let me say anything and was kind of condescending and rude. It was very presumptuous of you to think people were rude to her but I couldn't get a word in edge wise so it would be impossible to be rude when you're not talking . Plus I don't really think you can weigh in on the Lindsay issue anyway since you've never talked to her over the phone, but the people who have such as myself are all telling the same story. My overall experience with BAA has been excellent though, fast shipping and excellent customer service by email. I will continue to buy at BAA .

I have ordered from baa and had good luck, I think once I ordered a rubber set and a few were not there but I had my replacements promptly, once I let them know.

I also had the chance to stop in there on the last California extreme 2013. I was impressed by their customer service when I stopped in. I bought more than I planned because of it.

The staff that helped me there were very helpful and friendly. I hope to see their crew at the next cal extreme.

Not to mention while I was waiting in the lobby I was playing Big Bang bar. A first for me.

popcorn-startrek.gif

I'm just glad I haven't gotten the "Harry Potter" assortment of Jelly Belly's!

When I ordered from Pinball Life(parts BAA doesn't have), I got a special "thank you" drawing from one of their kids(I assume). It was a neat touch.