We've established a pattern of recent Stern playfields that have insert ghosting right out of the box, and rapidly worsening over time.
We've also seen that the quality of their clearcoat is poor, resulting in premature chipping and failure of the clearcoat in areas subject to the most aggressive contact with the ball.
I don't care if it's CCCs problem or someone else's, I want Stern to stand behind their products.
Specifically, IMHO they need to:
a) Acknowledge that these issues are not satisfactory and not within acceptable product specs.
b) Take care of recent customers who have machines that are suffering from these issues by sending out fully-populated replacement playfields, unpopulated playfields, or even replacing/returning entire machines, as required.
c) Take real corrective action to improve their products to avoid these issues leaving the factory in the future.
Buyers need to have confidence that their investment in a NIB Stern pinball won't arrive from the factory with these issues, and that if they do arrive faulty, that Stern will stand behind their machines. I, for one, won't buy another NIB Stern until I see a long-term trend of improvement. Even then, fool me once...