Quoted from SadSack:You must have slept through the decades of clearcoat adhesion problems for both GM and Ford. I don't recall any compensation for the cars I owned that faded/bubbled/peeled. They were all out of warranty.. just like your NIB playfield.
And, as I pointed out previously, you can go to the dealership today and find plenty of cars with orange peel. I don't see GM stripping and repainting any of the corvettes coming off the line with orange peel... and a lot of those are special ordered as well. I wonder how many special order cars are rejected because of paint issues.
Both of your statements above are referring to products that are not brand new. Out of Warranty = Old. You aren't making fair comparisons to get your point across. These games are defective right out of the box.
You can't compare orange peel to ghosting, they are two completely separate issues. Orange peel can be buffed out by a competent detailer. Ghosting cannot. If you purchased a brand new car and noticed an issue with orange peel the dealer can take care of it. You discover ghosting on your pinball playfield and it's like pulling teeth to get a timely resolution if you receive a resolution at all.
The whole car analogy is just not a fair comparison. Trying to compare the two is difficult because there are so many differences: One product is mass produced and the other is not. Sure Stern makes a decent number of games but they will never hit the same production numbers car companies do with their product. Shoot, even Mitsubishi makes more cars than Stern makes games! 
One of the primary reasons why car analogies fail is due to the fact that you can inspect a new car before purchase but you can't do the same with a pinball machine. Many analogies are not fair to Stern, for example someone tried to compare issues with their Xbox 360 and a Stern pin. This is yet another product that is completely different and not a good basis for an analogy. Sure, some basic quality control and customer service points can be valid but only to a limited degree.
I am wondering what the source of the problem is. On one hand it is alarming to me that these games made it out the door at all. On the other hand, what if somehow the ghosting wasn't present at the time of inspection. Could it be the fact that their games are laying down during production and inspection but once they get packaged up and make the trip to the consumer the issue presents itself then? Maybe the heating/cooling/expansion/contraction of the materials, plus the excessive vibration during the trip, along the fact that the game is standing vertically causes a mechanical separation of the clear from the plastic inserts?
I have never seen this many reports of ghosting. This ghosting issue, to the degree we are seeing in these pictures, is unprecedented. I don't think anyone is expecting a 100% flawless game, but issues that could have easily been caught on the manufacturing floor should have been caught and remedied. Unfortunately Stern won't communicate and put some of the fears to rest.
To the point about ghosting being on every game, that is simply untrue. It may happen on a measurable number of games but it sure doesn't occur on all of them. I was just looking over my games and I do see some ghosting on my Stern Spiderman, but only on the edges of a few inserts and that game has had many thousands of plays and is almost ten years old. The rest of my games do not have any noticeable ghosting. If they ghost down the line after many years of use that isn't completely unexpected, but for them to ghost before they are even unboxed, that isn't acceptable.
I hope Stern sorts this out because I want a Ghostbusters!! Just not right now and most likely not NIB.
Carmel Hamlet, NY
