Considering Jpop is making very limited quantities and is charging a hell of a lot more, I'd HOPE he's listening!

More impressive would be if Stern learns to start listening (and I'm talking BEFORE deficiencies are exposed).

Or, maybe, enough customers said they felt they should be able to see WOZ before losing out on the preorder discount, and he decided to listen. I mean when the JJP Invisiglass logo issue happened, only a company greedy for money and uncaring about any sort of customer service would give out free replacement sheets of glass.

Oh, wait...

Maybe not, but all the bright, colorful blinky lights (never underestimate the power of blinking lights) and a playfield that doesn't look like it was constructed out of a single sheet of lexan might help too.

Considering the price wasn't even scheduled to go up until the 15th (and it's still the 11th), I would say it's a simple error and could be easily cleared up with Jack/Jen. Much more entertaining to rile up folks here, though.

Does it show the starting price of Hobbit LE at $8000? Definitely just an error if that's so. Just email them, they'll get it cleared up by morning. Email Jack and he'll probably get back to you in minutes!

Edit: just thinking out loud here, I looked at my invoice and it shows a $7500 starting price and no other charges, but maybe they switched to $8000 minus a $500 discount and for some reason the discount didn't show? Regardless, you got til summer 2014 to get it cleared up!

Funny enough, I missed it too!

A year ago, I thought very similarly to you. The end result of both methods is the same: you need X amount of money by a certain date. So why have a payment plan if you could just as easily save it up yourself for one big payment?

But I understand it more now. It breaks through a mental barrier by having smaller payments. "5 easy payments of $19.99!" is far more palatable than $100. Plus, a lot of people DO have trouble planning ahead. Having a set date when a certain amount MUST be paid by prevents procrastination.

Stern released Avatar LE at $5500 MAP (about $5200 street) a month *before* Jack announced WOZ at $6500. The gap wasn't that huge.

Then came TRS LE and Transformers LE at $5800 street, but the real jump came with AC/DC LE, X-Men LE and Avengers LE, which all seem to be in the $6900-$7000 range.

I don't think you'll find that many people opposed to this particular criticism. I've always thought it was a stupid idea to cannibalize sales of one machine by announcing the "next best thing" while you still want to sell "the current best thing". In this case it's compounded by not even having your "current best thing" shipping yet! There's a reason Stern refuses to comment on a new machine until just before it's ready (although they also have the absolute worst secret-keeping department in this regard).

Don't know that he's played it since. I do know strength adjustment is in code now (maybe not all over yet), and eventually I'd like him to try one again to see if there's any marked improvement.