Well it’s good they didn’t get right back to you in 2 seconds because you would have ordered from them and missed out on the lower priced one with free shipping you bought. Brightside!

But I am a little confused how you were an op 10 years ago with 45 machines yet didn’t know any one of your old connections to contact about buying a new game??

This! Pick up your damn phone if it can't wait. Most people who are busy running a small business aren't glued to their inbox all day waiting for a sales inquiry. Same day response is not bad at all.

you were receiving replies that same day, I'd call that a win
do you think there is someone at the distributors checking their e-mail every 5 minutes?

hey, I just know that one of our local distributors is just a business with three guys, I doubt they check their emails more than twice a day
If I contact either a distributor or a part supplier, I will consider it good if I receive a reply within 24 hours

I have purchased 3 machines from Tommy at Nitro Pinball. Always responsive. Great guy and will buy more from him.

Some distributors are more motivated than others so they will check all modes of communication. Right now there is so much demand with such low stock of most NIB games it's mostly just answering an email with a depressing "out of stock and don't know when there will be any available", not much motivation when they have no product to sell at the moment.

Menards hahaha that reminds me…They need to make a “Monster Squad” pinball.

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Zach at flipnout pinball is best I've dealt with. He's quick and best in the biz.

Automated Services is a company you want to phone contact. Always been like that. I got my MMR there.

Thats why it took so long, theyre doing vaccines too!

Your title doesn’t really speak to your experience here and your post simply says (paraphrased) ‘I emailed them, it took several hours to get reply, I emailed again, several hours for reply’ .. that’s all we got except this somehow went on for a week? So the reader is left filling in the blank — you had questions for a week and got two answers answered every day? Or you got two questions answered and got two replies then nothing for a week on a 3rd question?

All it sounds like is that you think a company should email you back answers to any questions you have at any time of the Work day in 5 minutes or so (give it take). That’s pretty ridiculous. But sounds like you found what you wanted in the end. Just pretty ridiculous expectations in general for email communication. Within 2-3 days I’d say is kind of expected. That’s great that you might run a company different, but I’d say that’s an exception not an expectation in the world. As many others stated, a phone call would have saved you a week and all the time posting this thread.

You are,BUT they're allowed to lie to you. You are NOT allowed to lie to them. It's just the nature of the process.

I’m torn on how to feel about this thread.
On one hand I’m like “yeah, I’m sick of these guys in the business sucking at communicating with buyers!”

Then on the other hand I’m replaying what happened and wondering why this is a thread because of the summation:

“I tried to buy from someone
They sucked
I found someone better and got what I wanted
And I’m still mad!”

Meanwhile a lot of us in the hobby have spent 100s to 1000s of dollars already and are still waiting on a product that isn’t on a truck yet with a tracking number.

rue_ if this experience has you this upset I’m going to advise to not buy reproduction backglasses if you get into the restoration side of things. You’d probably have a stroke.

Bought a number of machines from Automated . Not one problem . I chose not to email and always called direct with any questions
Most of the time Mike (the owner) answered the phone and was always helpful .

I get what you are saying. Years ago, I tried buying games from a retailer that I already bought a few games from. He would never call me back when he said he would and basically didn't seem to want my business. It seems like that sort of thing is more and more common these days especially when you can blame covid for everything.

I have bought 3 NIB in the last 3 years...3 different distributors no issues..other then waiting 8 months for Jurassic Park Prem....I knew well in advance that was going to be,,,,,

To the OP. I just called recently and got invoiced for a CCr SE. It took me 5 minutes. I bought my MMr from them. A phone call and I drove there and picked it up. Based on your location I'll assume you've never been there. Its a giant ware house and there is like no more than 1 or 2 people there at a time. It's a family run business. Mike and his daughter are both really nice to work with. They bring a ton of games to Pintastic every year. I'm sorry you've had a bad experience. I haven't had one yet. Their used games are pretty up there in price but NIB is NIB. If you pay with a check you don't get wacked for the charge fee which is pretty nice. They pass that savings on to you. My MMr didn't have a manual in the box. I called them and they dealt with CGC and got me a new manual right away.

Well I can't help you not be upset. I would say its fair to say you had a bad customer service experience. I would say its unfair to say they are just always bad at customer service. I can imagine they probably get a ton of emails from tire kickers that don't have any intension of actually buying a machine. And believe me, this hobby is chock full of that.

Agree, the operators who need pros for locations should be given priority. More people can see and play a machine when it's on location.

Because we see the same complaints over and over and people just don't seem to get it.

Not getting what you asked for when you wanted it IS AN ANSWER!
Go somewhere else if you don't like it.

Still good that you posted about your experience to help others researching distributors.

I'm fairly new to the hobby. Recently sold a pin to a guy fairly close to me off Pinside. We became friendly and text routinely. He has bought 3 NIB machines from Mike @ Pinballs.com and had a great experience. I just decided to go for my 1st newbie. Called Pinballs.com at 12:55 last Sat. afternoon (they close @1 EST.) Mike answered the phone. Couldn't of been nicer and answered everything. This past Tue. I called back to put my order in. His secretary answered and was pleasant, but had to get some answers directly from Mike for the order. He was on another line and she requested if he could call me back. With in about a minute he called me, went through the details and then put me back with Becky for a deposit. Looking forward to my Godzilla Premium hopefully August 2022.
On the flip side, 1 of the biggest scum bags in this hobby is Craig known as "pinballdude1". He has a pool and game room store in Vegas. Billiards N More. You want to get screwed? Try dealing with him. Everything he posts is "AMAZING", until you see the garbage he sends out. Lesson learned, ONLY buy in person or new. It's unfortunate that the terms and conditions that Pinside has in place does NOT allow to post negative feedback on the user directly. That's why many of these guys only have 100% positive.

Then you probably need to learn how to use a smart phone for communication/business and not rely on 50 year old, slow technology [email]. Use a distributor that will answer your phone call and you can typically have things squared away in 10 minutes. I have NEVER had a problem buying something in stock from local distributors with a simple phone call or TXT message. If you are going PREM or LE, that is a completely different matter and I wish you luck on your quest.

Exactly. The best lesson folks can learn, if they don’t already know, from this topic is don’t email for best pricing and service. Call and go email only if the person on the other line tells you that is the best way to buy from them. Like seriously if you want an newly announced LE you would email to try to get one? Cmon?! Well if that is how you do things, OP or anyone else here, good luck with that.

Find a good dealer and stick with them in the future. Don’t click and order either because you may get a bette price calling. Newer folks tend to click and buy until they learn.

Yes buying a new pinball sucks now, but for many other reasons not for the reasons of slow no email responses.

Things changed since Beston. These next Gen kids do things differently.

But glad OP got a game and hope he does well with it on location.

Well, the bottom line here is the guy that took just a minute out of his day got your business... What a fricken concept! Here is another one... he most likely will get all your business now! The other dude is a dumb fuck and he got nothin... nough said...

This. I have purchased a few NIB from Mike and Beckey at pinballs.com. They have always been courteous and provided great customer service. Have another pin arriving next Tuesday. Put the order in this Tuesday afternoon, they received stock in from Stern that night (as they said they would) and turned it around and had it on a truck the following morning.

I am sorry to hear that the op had a bad experience.

Mike is a great guy. I would buy from Automated in a heartbeat

Outside of a receipt, these days, it’s too slow and inefficient when buying and selling. Messaging apps and texting are way easier to use, more secure, and more widely used as well.

Let’s just say that most people are not hovering over their email inbox anymore waiting to respond to a potential customer. In my industry, you are much more likely to get a sale finalized in minutes if you are using texting and phone calls instead of emailing back and forth, waiting for hours or sometimes days for responses on both ends. We certainly still use emails but it’s quickly being lapped by sales reps in my industry that use those other “faster” tools.

So the first distributor didn’t respond to emails fast enough so you used a phone for the next distributor?

Probably many more content people out there than one might think. Most content people probably lurk and rarely post, and occasionally roll their eyes while reading the forums.

Well that rectangular texting/emailing device you carry around is called a cell PHONE....

There are a lot of good points in this thread, but I just want to mention that there is a very good reason to use email for purchases like this, as well as really any business matter.

Email creates a record of what was said.

And I say this not as a "gotcha" type of thing or as something to be used in a lawsuit (which is hopefully never necessary). But simply, it will help you remember all of the details.

How many times have you discussed something on the phone and later tried to remember some detail about it? Well, with email you can go back and look.

Same thing would apply to texts/messaging, etc, but it's simply easier for all to convey larger amounts of info in email than texts.

In my job I always want to hash things out via email rather than a conference call. Yes, it's not as fast or efficient. But there's a really good reason they people (and much of the business world) still use email.

The problem is a lot of these people kiss ass on here talking good about distributors, thinking the distributors will read the comments and maybe give them better service. You are right the service most of these distributors give is not good. I'm having problems with them also.

Or people have experiences that are different than yours.

I've had the opposite happen. I talked honestly about a distributor and then they purposely ignored me. Didn't offend me at all, just reaffirmed what I thought about them.