Good responses from JJP, so this is purely constructive...

It's 2014, and it's absurdly cheap and easy to create/distribute high quality videos or tutorials on how to do basic troubleshooting/repairs/part replacement. I think a large number of "non pinheads" would be ok with digging in and doing a repair if their hand was held the whole way. You could even send them a $20 tool kit with a soldering iron/nut drivers along with the part.

I'd imagine most of the repairs/issues are similar or identical. It really wouldn't take as much time as it might seem to send a customer a video of how to do their exact repair once the problem is identified.

While it may be true that this is how the industry has always worked, the industry has changed quite a bit, so customer service practices should as well.

In the past pins were sold mostly to operators, who presumably knew at least some basic repair since it was their business. This isn't the case anymore, most pins are sold to a home environment now. The customer base took a 180 shift, but customer service did not adapt.

Oh yea, retailers with warranties/service plans completely fix this problem. But this is a classic pinside damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. People blast retailers here for their high prices, yet fail to realize the value they add for non pinheads until something like this happens.

So then what is the solution if the distributor is hundreds of miles away and there are no techs within a reasonable distance?

I agree that if you drop $10k on a brand new machine, you shouldn't have to spend another dime just to get it to play as promised, but there aren't a lot of easy answers here.