Whats the best way to handle a chipped playfield under warranty?

One small chip no pooling.

Get loud act out, or be polite and professional?

Tell your distributor and then follow up constantly. In my experience, they won't do anything unless you constantly bother them.

Send stern an email, if it’s a new game they will prob send you a playfield

Holy fuck that's a shitty job. Is there ANY quality assurance going on??

JJP-wow (resized).jpg

Please tell me you're sending this back.

Thanks it is a JJP CE machine.

I should have said that in my post, seems JJP has great customer service so I was wondering what they will do?

For a CE at $12,500 I would hope they either take the game back or send you a fully populated playfield. There's no excuse for this chipping / pooling BS at these insane prices.

For a CE they might do something

I'm thinking that the number of units involved in their 'buy-back' customer satisfaction program could be quite small mainly due to the shipping, costs and processing involved. It's their last resort I am sure. And if the number of machines is a mere handful, I am guessing they would get the machines back to the factory, and then re-work the damage, perhaps with simple touchup and washers, and then make those machines available through non-traditional sales programs (i.e. employee purchase, top salesrep incentive programs, etc.) Too bad that quality control issues with their main source of income is problematic this far down the road.

It's pretty noteable that any manufacturer would offer to make you 100% whole on a big ticket item like this.

Not JJP. They prefer to just string you along, tell you to "switch to decaf" and leave you hanging with a bare playfield that you have no possibility of installing yourself.

And before someone jumps in and gives me shit about someone's offer to swap my field, I'll remind you that even THAT process won't be free.

was just reporting what i saw on location
I don't know the number of plays on their IronMan but they have had it for a long time and LZ is brand new

Why would a replacement playfield be any different quality? Probably wind up going through a shit-ton of work just to have it shit the bed again.

I finally got a replacement jurassic Park playfield from Stern. Not sure when/if I'll ever get around to swapping it at this point as it came like 5 months later than it was supposed to, but at least the quality of the replacement looks better as far as I can tell. I really wish they'd look at the playfields before installing them... I wonder if some of them get damaged when building the machines. There's one or two spots on my original playfield that have little gouges that make me think a screwdriver or something nicked it or some tool was dropped. I doubt they're going to take it apart when they're halfway done if something like that happens.

It’s not the quality of the play field as much as it is the lack of craftsmanship putting it together (combined with not letting the clear rest long enough). Over tightening, no washers anywhere, etc can lead to unecessary damage

JohnTTwo is the chipped game a GNR CE?!

I actually had an alert go off on my phone as it has been 6 months since I was promised a new TMNT PF from my distro. I can understand at the moment if the game isn’t being run... but there’s also an expectation that if you have a quality issue, they don’t get a decade to resolve it.

At this point I want to keep it between the dealer, JJP, and myself.

I did learn one very important thing today, I should have thought of. With the environment being a bigger concern and moving to water based crap I can understand how they can't make things like they use too.

What company is making playfields with water based clear?

Let is sit for at least 5 months - maybe a year...if you ever decide to install it.
That clear will be rock solid by then.

You will get absolutely no where with JJP, Barry will string you along and after months of telling you upper management and ownership is aware and he cant make the decision, the whole time he already knows you’re going to get screwed by JJP. He will tell you that he can send you washers to cover the damage. If you complain enough he will then offer to buy back your game in hopes that you will just sell it privately and go away. It worked for him with me and at least 6 others on pinside that private messaged me, and BTW, i was told JJP is no longer sending out replacement playfields, Barry told me that on the phone and i have emails to prove it before the JJP fanboys jump on and defend JJP.

Not surprising, unfortunately.

People are tired of this playfield quality lottery BS that randomly keeps occurring and then companies not standing behind their insanely priced products.

If your game has a playfield issue and Stern or JJP isn't doing anything about it (and washers isn't doing anything) document their reply, then create a dedicated post on Pinside about it. If Stern and JJP want to charge $6k - $12k+ for their products then they need to offer top quality and be held accountable for it.

Yeah. I mean I got a replacement playfield so I'm sort of happy about it but I also was very frustrated by the process and Stern's support was not helpful. They told me they'd send it in mid October, and then when they missed that date, they would just ignore me when I asked when I could expect it. My distributor was completely useless. I think distributors are outdated and just seem to be another point of failure in the process.

So I haven’t been here in a while no was wondering if JJP playfield issues have been resolved as of machines going out today. How have the GNR CE machines been. Hoping to get a POTC rerun if released or possibly a Toy Story if playfields are of the highest quality. Fingers crossed. All comments and responses appreciated.

Here you go, chipping on a CE, so problem is not resolved.

Question for you. Did your game come with clear washers installed at the sling posts from the factory similar to below? Is this the area where your playfield chipped or was it somewhere else?

I'm not sure when JJP started including clear factory washers at the sling posts on games but all recently shipped games appear to have them installed.

Capture (resized).JPG

Panzer I do not have those clear post parts on my game, wish I did and my chipping is by an outlane.

Has anyone went this route? If so any words of wisdom? What to say? How to say it? What not to say in the dispute process? Is there a time limit on when to file a dispute?

thanks in advance.

It might just be time to return to silkscreen playfields..... you remember, when the ink actually stuck to the wood.

I still believe this is the main problem despite a lot of people trying to say otherwise.

The guy who built the black and white twilight zone told me CGC is still using diamond plate on their PF's and thats why they aren't having these issues. I kind of think thats incorrect but he swears thats what they told him.

I mean, anyone can see that the ink has lifted away from the substrate on the majority of the digitaly printed problem playfields.

I have an inbox full of horrendous photos

Notes on Diamond Plate I found in a link from an old Pinside thread. Are the chemicals used in Diamond Plate now banned?

"Diamond Plate is a hardcoat for pinball playfields that was developed in the mid 1980ies by Sun Process.
Ken Fedesna, Vice President at Williams asked Sun Process to research if pinball playfields could be made more dureable. Their answer was Diamond Plate. This was based on Imron, an automotive 2-component urethane hardcoat developed by DuPont. There were minor changes to its formula and application (thickness, drying time, ..) so it could be applied to the wood of playfields."

I'm not even a playfield wizard like you, but thats exactly what I see and what makes sense to me. If the ink isn't staying bonded to the wood underneath, the clearcoat is going to fail wherever its stressed

It is very obvious there is an adhesion problem with the ink. I just assume most people say clear coat to keep it simple. As soon as they started removing the ink in problem areas it pretty much proved it. Such a terrible solution though, text book case of treating the symptom instead of the actual cause.

so am i safe to order a JP Premium or should i just move on?

Use a credit card, that gives you 120 days to do a chargback when the ink starts lifting.

Is JJP offering a buyback on games with defective playfields? Or is that only limited to some customers?

I asked myself this question about a year ago. I decided that the chances of getting a bad playfield were probably low. I figured the people with good playfields just never commented about it. I took a chance and got a bad playfield. Don't buy one unless you're willing to deal with sorting it out if you get a bad one. It's a hassle.

With the next batch of G&RLE due here in June, are the new playfields that JJP & Mirco are supposedly checking still chipping/ lifting etc..

I do not know, I am just thinking the water based ink, water based primers, what based = junk to me usually. Give me the old stuff with great fumes

Thats what I'd like to know as well. Are there any instances of bad playfields on GNR that have the "quality assurance" post under the apron?

Wouldn't that hurt the distributor? Or is this a sort of fu to them when they don't help? I may just hold off and buy a nice used one...

I don't get the quality assurance post, how can a post covering 1/2" of the playfield be indicative of the entire PF quality.
You would hope the clear was applied equally and consistently over the entire pf, but how do you know?

Guess it's at least an attempt at some sort of QC - better than nothing

It doesn't give me a lot of faith either but supposedly those ones have the problem fixed. Thats why I am so curious to see if thats the case

The clear is applied by robots- so should be consistent. Not sure if the robots mix the chemicals at the spray head or take it already mixed.

That’s one of the risks of being a distributor.

No worries.

Nothing will happen to the distributor. They simply won't pay the invoice when it comes due.

Dupont still makes it, it is not illegal.

Every day I prep numerous machines for production. Two of them are 6-axis robots for lacquer application. The motion of the bot is the only constant. The source material, mixture, lines, atmosphere, surface prep, tip condition, this employee who knows how to do it better than that one, variable exhaust, dry oven conditions and whatever else I'm missing at the moment. My point is; robotic spray application is a process of numerous variables. The robot is an incredible too, but it doesn't do all the work and troubleshooting. There's extensive work behind the scenes to make the finished product shine like its supposed to.

Double

I’ve bought all the recent Stern games. No issues with any. No chipping. No pooling, No (very minimal) dimpling. I’d say they solved the secret sauce. I have a GnR LE on the way soon, hopeful that playfield is rock solid too.