27 plays! That is just ridiculous.

At a bare minimum people who are buying these pins and then trying to sell them on are going to be asked questions about the pooling etc. If they have pooling and it hasn’t yet developed into chipping or lifting of the artwork then that’s basically asking prospective buyers to shoulder the burden of having to deal with Stern if/when it develops into that, assuming they’ll even deal with it for second hand pins etc.

Those people are buying a pin which is basically instantly devalued from having the pooling there.

I honestly don’t get why people are disregarding this as soon as a new theme is announced. All that achieves is to undermine the efforts of those with this problem who are trying to get it resolved. What lesson is there for Stern if they can just disregard existing owners and sell a new theme to other ones, or - worse - existing owners with the problem are too sucked up in the hype NOT to throw more money at them.

My Stern Tron LE has zero pooling, chipping or lifting. Spending the right amount of money on the playfield wood, artwork and clearing is not beyond the wit of man, they were already doing it years ago. I guess now, like the more conspicuous BOM cost cutting that saw drop targets removed and plastic ramps instead of wireforms, money spent on this stuff got shaved as well.

Elvira buyers don’t have to buy them. Anyone buying these pins now with the knowledge that it exists across several pins, and is being bandaided with washers and black circles instead if artwork, is basically asking to be punished.

If people had more resolve they wouldn’t accept it, and vote with their wallet. That’s the only power they have.

But.. but.. toxic chemicals or something.

Not doing the clear properly and letting it cure in good time too...

How are people supposed to trust that the game they buy is going to be sorted if all they’ve got to go on is a vague comment that the problem is fixed?

It sounds to me like inducing more people into buying pins that might turn out to be faulty, with each individual customer having to get their issues resolved individually, like how it is now.

Acknowledging that a problem exists and then refusing to elaborate is worse than not acknowledging it, in my opinion. I struggle to conceive of what competitive disadvantage it would put either company in to divulge the basic process change or whatever that led to fixing the problem. They’re not splitting the atom here.

Of course, as with any purchasing decision everyone has to make their own peace with it. My point was more in general terms, that customers shouldn't be being put in the position of having to gamble on this stuff anyway. It is not legitimate to essentially say "well you pays your money you takes your chance!" to everyone who is interested in buying.

The vibe I’m getting with this, with both JJP and Stern, is that they’re both just going to keep quiet about it, tell distros that they’ve “identified an issue and have resolved it” (whether they have or not) and let the community basically flame out over it.

People can’t sustain acrimony about this stuff indefinitely, there will be a fresh outrage in pinball before too long and that’s where people’s attention will go.

Meanwhile the poor bastards who have suffered from this problem are left trying to get it resolved, with ever diminishing public pressure, with varying levels of success or radio silence in some cases. Clearly not everyone is going to be treated like hawkmoon77 has - with a replacement populated PF.

Let’s look at this cynically shall we..

- Appease one or two vocal customers with top tier service
- Said customers report these customer service experiences on the issues thread (here)
- Bystanders and other customers think “Stern are doing the right thing, going above and beyond, that’s the mark of a great company” etc
- Bystanders drift out of the thread thinking that Stern are handling it, and go back to being satisfied to buy NIB pins in future.
- In reality only a lucky few may get made whole, the rest are chasing for updates or getting no replies at all, or subpar results (unpopulated PFs etc)
- But that doesn’t matter at this point because the sentiment is that Stern are putting things right because there is SOME evidence of it.

Someone in these companies would’ve made a clinical decision about whether it was cheaper and better PR to acknowledge publicly the problem or not. It seems it’s deemed better to pretend there wasn’t a problem, or if there was that is “been resolved” with no specifics whatsoever, and just wait for people on here to get bored of talking about it.

Why spend $3 on a coil stop when you can spend $0.50? That adds up you know!

Makes pins predominantly aimed at home users.

Offers solution to a manufacturing defect that only experienced (or ambitious) techs should attempt.

PF replacement is a little bit beyond changing bulbs etc.

Maybe they're looking for an exit strategy, maybe they're focused on maximising profit vs cost ratio to be attractive to investors, etc. Either way they seem to think they can get away with it, and it's possible they might.

You're pretty much right though when you say they're not the only game in town but sortof are. They're the ones cranking out multiple new theme pins every year. If you choose not to buy from them - and if you're been burnt or care about you're going to be treated you shouldn't - then you're basically saying that you're not going to be buying NIB pins for the forseeable future. CGC and JJP don't crank out games with anything like the same pace, and the latter has had issues too.

People kick up a big stink about not buying from Stern in the future, but I wonder how many of those people will cave when they bring out a theme that attracts them. Words on forums cost nothing, but FOMO is a helluva drug.

You need only see the hype about q potential Stranger Things pin coming to see why they persist with this business strategy. If all these complaints don’t actually translate to lost sales they have no incentive to change course.

I sincerely hope that people put their money where their mouth is and restrain themselves whenever these new pins are announced. It’s the only thing that stands to change their attitude, particularly as there is no real competition cranking out pins with the same frequency as them.

Hey, you and I both know all home users know how to strip down and rebuild a playfield from scratch, and have all the tools necessary to do it. Oh, and the time.

Exactly. Playing the lottery and winning doesn’t change the fact that it’s rigged, or that everyone else isn’t so lucky. Not to mention playing it at all validates the business model.

One guy’s JP2 is without flaws (possibly for now). Great, but his Stranger Things pin - if he buys one - or whatever else comes next might not be, then it’ll be him staring down the barrel of trying to get Stern to make him whole, like everyone else who had already been shafted.

The only winning move is not to play.

Their

You don’t need to be a cook to know when something smells like shit.

My Tron LE is perfect, because it was made when Stern were more customer focused, it seems.

Saw this today in a coffee shop and was reminded of this thread...

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Ultimately it’s really simple.

It’s not beyond the wit of man to produce playfields that don’t chip or pool, or seriously dimple. It was done 30 odd years ago by WMS, it’s still done today by the likes of CGC.

There’s one simple reason why this is happening now: cost. Reduction of BOM has been evident for some time now above the playfield (Munsters topper anyone? Single target bank instead of drops on the same pin, etc) so it’s no great surprise it’s spread to PF quality and QC.

You ought to have a problem with someone who is allegedly using both blackmail and also saying that they will actively LIE to the community about their resolution. That goes beyond an NDA in my opinion, an NDA is keeping quiet - not actively undermining the efforts of other people in the same situation by misrepresenting your position. It is the epitome of "f**k you, got mine".

I have every sympathy for anyone caught in the position of having a defective playfield be it Stern or JJP, and I totally get that $5k+ is a cost that means different things to different people. I can even sympathise with people who ultimately just want to get THEIR pinball fixed, and aren't going to lose much sleep if the whole community don't get the same deal.

I would personally draw the line at making shady backroom deals and threatening the company with blackmail and stating that you will lie to the community about what you got. That says more about one's morals I think, and goes beyond pinball.

Having said all of the above - it is all conjecture. 3 sides to the story is right.

I wasn't talking about you.

I was talking about the email to JJP that PinballSTAR apparently has from Goetz which proposed a $3k discount off a future pin, and offering to sign a NDA and "keep quiet" (from the community) about the resolution, and whatever else it said. I didn't say he was trying to "screw the entire pinball community", but - depending on the exact wording of the email - it could be construed as rather poor form, at the very least. This is all conjecture though, as said.

I thought I was very clear about the distinction between someone who is having problems with their pin who ultimately wants THEIR situation to be resolved, and making suggestions to the manufacturer through backchannels which could undermine the efforts of the affected community as a whole.

No arguments there.

This is great, but until this guy or someone like him is swimming in the same pool as Stern he might as well not exist.

It’s surreal.. being almost apologetic to the manufacturer/distributor for highlighting a defect on a $10k brand new product.

“I really hope you don’t mind sir, but I have a teensy weensy problem with my premium priced product. It’s probably my fault. I hope you’re not mad. Forget I said anything”.

Bizarro world.

You're not going to get a populated or even partially populated playfield unless yours is basically a pile of wood chippings.

"Accepted this as compensation" basically means if you accept it then liability for this and any future claims for the same issue would be disclaimed. Pretty standard really, it's essentially a "without prejudice" offer.

I'd say if you've been offered a spare playfield and you're outside the time period to be able to return the pin for a refund (if you actually wanted to do this) then that's likely to be the best you're going to get.

Imagine a company sending out a gearbox or clutch or something to replace a defective one and saying “there you go, have at it!”.

For your average consumer replacing a populated playfield would be a intimidating task, disconnecting the loom, pulling out the old playfield etc. Expecting an average consumer to be able to do a proper playfield swap is just ridiculous.

People have short memories with this stuff, and when a new pin gets released it gets shorter still. New pin with a theme based on something they remember from their youth? Straight up amnesia.

Stern won’t improve because they don’t need to. The only leverage consumers have over them is not putting up with this shit, but they can’t even manage not to throw money at them.

Not being funny, but what would you expect to happen?

People moan about this state of affairs, but then you see a new thread hyping JP, Turtles or whatever’s next, where people have got collective amnesia, or quite simply the lure of a new theme overpowers their critical faculties.. “this time it’ll be different”, “it won’t happen to me”.

Stern knows that the furore is not affecting their sales in a meaningful way, so they have got absolutely no impetus to change or do anything that costs them more money, including making good people who have problems.

If you need a zoom lense for this then you better get your eyes tested

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Yup, if you look close enough on any Stern pin in recent memory you’ll see the relatively low resolution of the artwork. I remember my Trim being pixelated (aliased) at the edges of the art. That isn’t a criticism per se, but it would be nice if it were higher resolution)

I think it’s a combination of desaturation and dithering that’s the problem here. Either way it’s not acceptable by any stretch.

This is the guy that announced that he was buying the $600 topper for JP. I think it’s fair to say we haven’t lost an objective voice.

It does make me laugh that an unpopulated playfield is the typical resolution to problems. I mean that’s pretty much like a car company sending you a new gearbox under warranty and saying “good luck!”.

Even if you disregard the labour involved in removing all the parts, there’s going to be numerous things that need to be desoldered, removed in a certain order, etc and then reassembled on the new playfield, assuming it’s properly routed (are they?). It’s not a task for the feint hearted, and even your typical pinball tinkerer would be intimated I think.

Easy to see why owners see it as an offset to the depreciation loss from the original blemishes, rather than a project they will (or can) take on themselves. Just give it to the new owner and kick the can down the road.

Still, it is amusing that this is the resolution offered. Not a populated playfield ready to drop in, or providing an engineer to come and install it for you, etc.

The thing is, you can’t really be that mad at Stern - in a general sense - because that’s exactly what they’re doing. They have investors to keep happy, and as a profit seeking entity they are doing the normal thing of seeking to reduce costs wherever they can.

The problem is not that this cost cutting is being exposed, but that it is not making any practical difference to this course. People are still buying the latest themes that are announced, in spite of what is known about the various issues, legacy and newly found, about the consequences due to the cost reductions.

The only leverage consumers have against Stern is not buying their stuff. If enough people do that, the tide will change. If they don’t, and Stern feels that new customers will replace the embittered ones, then nothing will change. In fact, from a quality point of view it’s sure to get worse. It’s clear from the release of new titles with the same old problems, and new ones, that we haven’t found that nadir yet.

So, it’s hard to be too mad at Stern for doing what they’re doing. All the power is in the consumers hands, and they are choosing not to use it.

A more accurate analogy would be buying a car, having issues with it and with the company addressing those issues, selling it, then keeping an ear to the ground and hearing about other owners buying newer versions of the car that still have the same issues and the same difficulties getting them resolved, and after all of that still buying the next car they churn out - because you really like the look of it - on the sheer hope that you won’t suffer the same problems again.

Stern know that people will keep buying their pins in spite of these issues, even if those same people have already experienced the issues themselves! People hear about a new theme coming out and immediately forget this thread and even their own experiences in some cases. FOTM is real.

Stern will never change until people stop putting up with it, and as long as people think it’s a thing that happens to other people, or “I’ll be lucky this time”, then people won’t stop putting up with it.

Pros maybe, but Premiums and LEs are clearly aimed at home users nowadays (and have been for some time).

In this post-COVID world arguably Stern’s primary market is going to be home users.

Even that fridge analogy is too generous, I feel. I could probably have a crack at replacing a compressor.

A more accurate analogy would be expecting customers to rebuild the entire fridge from scratch, from parts, when those customers had only ever just enjoyed consuming food from it, and had never made a fridge before.

Let’s not forget who are buying these pins nowadays too. It’s not ops - in the main - it’s end users who just enjoy playing pinball, who can replace rubbers and maybe do a bit of light soldering if push comes to shove. These companies are expecting those customers to carry out playfield swaps themselves, a task that is not remotely trivial. Even seasoned pros would take some time doing it.

At best all these companies are doing is asking the customer to kick the problem down the road, to the next owner (who also likely won’t be capable of doing it and will leave the replacement PF in storage, for the next owner).

It’s a total shambles. The minimum these companies should be providing are populated playfields, or sending a tech out to do the swap for the customer expenses paid.

I too am grateful to our overlord Stern and JJP for providing a replacement free playfield to replace add to the one I've already got.

There is some distance, a gulf in fact, between someone being able to rebuild flippers and do a bit of light soldering, to wholesale replacing a playfield. The two things are not remotely equivalent, so it's a fallacy to say that people who aren't capable of doing the latter can't "fix their own machines". You're using reductive language to absolve Stern/JJP of responsibility to make their customers whole.

Would you make the same argument about people who buy cars, who can change the screenwash, replace the oil, maybe the brake discs, that they should be capable of dropping engines and gearboxes, etc as well? Would you grace car manufacturers with the same latitude that you're giving Stern/JJP here, that it would be perfectly fine for them to send out replacement gearboxes that the customer has to fit themselves, on their own dime?

I'd wager that swapping a playfield is actually probably more complex than replacing an engine or gearbox, given how much wiring is involved, the potential for mistakes that could damage or destroy components that might not be easily replaceable or cost a fortune. Are Stern/JJP standing behind people who undertake this work and wire things the wrong way, blowing node boards, etc?

The absolute least these companies should be doing is providing populated playfields, and even then I'd suggest it's not a trivial job for a typical end user to swap. They ought to be sending these populated playfields out with a technician to do the swap.

I find it staggering that people are actually ok with getting an unpopulated playfield as a solution to a defective warrantied product, it's like they've got Stockholm Syndrome or something.

Because people can’t help themselves. They must buy the latest theme! And they know it.

The only power people have in this game is not buying into it, but they can’t even manage that.

Clearly the answer is fitting bigger and bigger washers until the entire playfield is a sheet of metal.

Do you have the equivalent of small claims court over there? In the UK you can basically file a claim against an entity for a nominal cost (equates to a couple of hundred dollars) which then legally burdens the other party with resolving the matter or ending up with a court judgement against them for the claimed value.

Those emails you received have a whiff of just stringing you along until you stop bothering them or accept whatever you can get from them.

I'm not going to lie, but I chuckled when i first saw that. It was sortof a black humour chuckle, as I'm sure you must have been incredulous at the time. "Great news, you're going to stop bothering us!"

Someone pointed out earlier that the OP of this thread has been asking about buying the new Mando pin. If true, that pretty much speaks volumes really. It's been said multiple times but Stern, JJP, etc have no motivation to bend over backwards to fix anything so long as demand meets or exceeds supply, especially when the people that complain are just going ahead and buying their next pin sight unseen again anyway, presumably because "this time it'll be different".

People might make the argument that if you weren't buying these new pins, what would you do? Miss out on some great themes? Well, yes, that's exactly what you would do if you had any conviction. If people complain about pooling, chipping, etc and then go on to buy another NIB pin from these same companies, with no assurances that anything has been fixed or improved - they immediately disqualify themselves in my mind as having a legitimate complaint. They are part of the problem.

The ONLY leverage you have over Stern, JJP, indeed many corporate entities, is the power of your wallet. If you can't even manage not to buy the next pin they bring out, because you just can't stop yourself, then you have only yourself to blame, because those companies are meeting your expectations (your actual ones, not the ones you profess to have when you complain about issues).

Would you say this is a problem of how often new themes are released?

I don’t know Stern’s business model but I’m presuming they have to keep creating and launching new themed pins to remain profitable. This necessarily means that there is a finite time between the design and manufacture of a new themed playfield before it has to be installed in a machine and sold to someone. Since Stern seem to be releasing new themes at least 3 or 4 times a year, this would tend to suggest that - at most - a newly clearcoated playfield has 3 months to cure, and that assumes that Stern are ahead of themselves constantly - i.e. as soon as one theme is distributed they already have the next one manufactured and curing in a room somewhere. That doesn’t seem likely to me.

If this is ultimately a cure time problem, and Stern “have” to crank out 4 themes a year, what is the solution?

(This doesn’t excuse JJP who don’t release stuff with anything like this frequency)

Spare a thought for these young corporate entities just trying to make a living selling boutique products at prices that far exceed the BOM, who then completely wash their hands of any QC issues and make customers wait months to be made whole, or fiat out ignore correspondence completely. It’s just growing pains!

It’s not their fault they’re well aware of playfield issues and have done absolutely nothing to rectify it. That costs money! Money that would be better served sitting on the balance sheet.