I wish I could up vote this more than once.

Really shows the risk these pinball companies are engaged in where one-two titles could make or break a company. Even for an established industry-tentpole like Stern. Stern's risk and liability seems incredible here and the little guys (Distributors and Suppliers) probably aren't equipped to take a hit like this.

It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

Staying w/ my GB Premium order b/c I really don't see Stern furthering their liability exposure by willfully and knowingly shipping compromised playfields to a distribution that is probably 4x-6x larger than the LE run.

If they do, then they just add all of us GB Premium buyers left to the already sizable and growing angry mob.

I hope that those of you already affected by this get a satisfying solution that doesn't kill their business or supply chain.

For their own sake I hope Stern stops stepping on their own junk like this or we can hang up any talk of a Star Wars pin (or whatever) - they won't be around to do it.

False.

When I started researching to buy my WOZ, I asked alot of folks. In the process I met 3 people in my region alone that JJP sent entirely new playfields, plus other concessions. In each of those 3 people, I thought it ironic that the problems apparently were not bad enough to warrant them doing the playfield swap, they continued to play and enjoy their games on the original playfield. 2 stored the playfields away for later or as a bonus when they sold their machine, one sold his new playfield on eBay. 1 of the 3 sold his WOZ and JJP even created / extended a warranty and transferred it to the buyer.

Wasn't there a Gary Stern / Vigo photoshop image floating around here awhlie back? That might be the fix-my-playfield image for a shirt to wear at expo.

At least you guys gave me something to drone on about while I sit on conference calls today........

http://arcadeshenanigans.com/blog/2016/8/15/the-ghostbusters-effect

well, that and surf the internet looking at cars, drooling..

Yep, similar experience here too. They repaired a friend mine's Avatar MPU (sound issue) - for a fair price and in a couple of weeks. They replaced an LED board on my out-of-warranty Star Trek Premium, for free and they didn't have me go out of my way with any annoying and needless troubleshooting silliness, either. I sent a detailed email and got a similarly detailed response. Quick resolution.

By contrast, My company (used to) pay Rackspace the price of one of these pins per month for a couple (small) servers in a leased hosting arrangement and by contrast to get something fixed with server hardware, took 2-hour phone calls and a pile of paperwork. Many hoops to jump through.

In fact, both Stern and JJP have both been good to me on support, thus far with pins. I'm sure being months behind on production, supply chain issues, quality issues is probably not helping their support capacity right now for GB. I hope that the 'program' Gary mentioned to KPG is going to be a populated playfield swap for affected games. I wonder if the 'program' and expenses related have some weird derivative financial implications through bonding and insurance or something?

At any rate, not to beat a dead horse but wanted to be fair and mention Stern has done right by me, so far.

I wonder if they could give you a solid estimate on how long the swap would take?

I mean, they have the capability to do it in the day, not a month. If it were me (and heck, it may be me soon, as well) - I'd push for a turnaround commitment at minimum or maybe meet in the middle with a cross-ship arrangement with a Net 15 terms attached conditional on the playfield return.

I wonder why this has to be so hard?