I've read enough of this to know this and say just this...

I agree with those that have said that it was irresponsible for DP to not have an exit plan in place for any one particular member with something this complex. In the little business that I run, we call it the "bus" plan.

If I get run over by a bus, my partner knows what should happen with the business.

This doesn't mean that there is any problems with the project itself by the way, but as others said, I hate the crowdfunding idea for things like this because I don't see the business plan up front, and I'm essentially buying into it like I do. No matter what the intentions, it is only so long before some company completely burns it's customers by doing things this way, and the pinball world is currently full of way too much of it. If DP went belly up (and I'm NOT saying that they will) and couldn't refund the money, how would everyone feel?

If the risk was listed as 100% in Phil's name (thanks to my SSN being used in the account), why doesn't he have the right to deny them access to the account? Not saying that they would, but if the other principals took the money out of the account with no intention to send those people machines, it is going to show up as 100% on Phil's back.

I never said that it was, but again - do you KNOW this, or do you just FEEL this? If it was misappropriated, Phil would get 100% of the blame. And, again, Phil as of 6 weeks ago is no longer part of the company, so that feels unfair.

But hey, my skin ain't in it, and there is a rug to be had. I'll stop now.

Exactly. That's all that I'm getting at too. Since it *was* set up that way, I don't see what else should have been done.

Honestly, I don't know if it was mismanagement from the get go, and I don't know if it is mismanagement of the customer's money. I run a business like I've said, and sometimes we do take pre-orders, and when we do, we might take some of that pre-order money to pay off a bill that we have immediately for something else. That doesn't mean that we're mismanaging the money - and we have always come through with our products in a timely fashion.

Even if 100% of the TBL money was spent on other stuff, as long as TBL showed up, non of it was mismanaged. It's a personnel mismanagement issue at the core of it.

Yeah, except no one can ever define build quality. For working right out of the box, pretty much all operators say that Stern games are much better day one than Bally / Williams were.

*shrug*. My single bulb backboxes burn out way less often than bulbs in my lots-of-bulb boxes.

Oh, and my RFM has a single bulb.