Yeah, not going to lie, that was a bit difficult to read, but as someone who had a lot of transactions with K's Arcade, I had nothing but great things to say about them (him). Always helpful, and always provided helpful feedback. I do miss that he left NH for greener pastures, but I've had nothing bad to say about him and have had nothing but the most pleasant transactions as well as good feedback to problems I may have had.

If you buy a game that doesn’t work but has all the boards, send them to Clive at Coin Op Cauldron. He can fix them and it will be considerably cheaper than buying new ones. Repaired original boards are always preferable in my opinion.
That being said, when I did need to buy a new board I’ve used K’s without problem.

Same here. Rottendog boards are not any more reliable than repaired originals. Also, certain RD boards use some hard to find parts. You'll find out when it fails.

I can guarantee you that if you bought Rottendog boards from me at Big Daddy, you would not have any warranty issues, I'd do what it takes to make sure you're up and running. What I don't get at all is the MPU004 comes with NVRAM, and it's covered by warranty by Rottendog. Though hard to get ahold of, Jim there would have sent you a new chip if it was bad. Don't understand the attitude at all.

True, but just as hard to now find legit LM323Ks, 2N3055s, 6502s, 6532s, 6821s, 6802s, 2N3584, TMS5200s, 1N5275s, AD558, Spider chips on Gottlieb boards, many 7400 series chips, AY sound chips, Molex pins and housings for Gottlieb and more I can't think of.

I had a problem with Ks arcade in the past (4+ years ago). I was having
a problem with a Williams System 3 machine that would start a game but
would reset when particular targets were hit. I removed the playfield
connectors and verified it was somewhere in one of the two main boards.
Sent in two boards .. one was an MPU board that K's arcade rebuilt
sometime in the past and the other was the driver board.
He convinced me the MPU was fine and the Driver board was bad (so bad
that I needed a new one!). I got them back and the problem was still
there! After a lot of learning and research I figured out that the roms
in the MPU board were for a different machine (although marked for my
machine by K’s Arcade). I sent for new roms (from someone else!) and then everything
worked fine. So postage to and from K's ($30+). New Driver board which
I didn't need ($175 - $15 trade value for my perfectly good one!). So
that was $190 when all I needed was the correct roms that he screwed up in the first place.
This experience has been the worst I had in my pinball hobby. I hope
others are better than mine.

Mike V.

Moral of the story: K’s Arcade internal motto .. customer is always wrong and take advantage of newbies.

Stay away

Based on my own experience with K’s Arcade I have to say I’m not at all surprised to read all the negativity. After my last purchase I refuse to deal with them again.

I've probably bought over $10K worth of boards from K's over the years for my pin repair business and have never had an issue that wasn't quickly resolved. They are a great asset to the community. And no, I don't work for them or get any discounts.

I'm guessing that K's tests every CPU board it ships after they install NVRAM. If they do and your board passed, I can see how they might not want to warranty the board. Not saying anyone is right or wrong, but I doubt they ship a board with NVRAM without testing it first.

Also, shotgunning a game that's blowing fuses by throwing all new boards at it is not a good approach. Any decent tech should be able to tell you which boards are good and which aren't within an hour or so. If you're going to buy blown out DE games, properly diagnose them and replace boards as needed. Shotgunning boards is never a good idea.

I’ve used Ks quite often. They are generally my go to for boards as I’ve had great service from them In the past but have never had to deal with a warranty issue with them. I’ll def think twice about purchasing from them in the future if this is how they deal with defective board issues and their customer service on the service/warranty side sounds like it’s ran by the Soup Nazi.
What did you do with old boards? I’d be willing to buy them off you.

I've never had an issue that needed customer service, but I will keep this in mind going forward. Also keep in mind...if you have a short on the playfield that knocked out something on your old board, and you plug the new board in without fixing it...new board is going to go "poof" also. So I can see why a seller has certain policies. Also, the seller can't afford to be your shotgunning service either. Like when an inexperienced customer buys 5 boards for a machine, then sends 4 back when they find the problem board. I can see both sides of the coin here.

Keith accused me of using his boards to diagnose a machine and was a real prick about it. I sent him a video of a board I just bought From him that had an issue along with a video of the same machine working with a board from one of my other machines just to show him the issue. That turned into a mess. I also bought a board complete with roms installed by him backwards that blew the chips. Plug and play boardset. He refused to believe he did that and did not offer replacements. There are better sellers and cheaper sellers. I bought a ton of boards from him over years. In the end he really did not care about losing a customer. He did refund the opto board, but never offered anything for the blown rom chips. He refused to believe he installed them backwards. I did not think to check them prior to installing it. I always double check ready to install boards because of that.

Data East power supply boards are well known for their lousy fuse clips that break. You can buy a full set of new fuse clips for about $5 from some of our usual parts suppliers.

Not necessarily.

Great Plains Electronics.

I've seen people solder them to the clips as a quick fix, haha.

I purchased a board from him in the past, and installed it right away in my STTNG, it had a bad transistor upon first power on and the right flipper wouldn't work at all.

Keep in mind that I bought the board because I was chasing a slow upper right flipper issue... so I put the old board back in and the game went back to normal.

Called K, and was immediately told that he wouldn't send me a new one, that I had to deal directly with RD.

So basically the money I saved buying from K was spent on shipping the board to RD where they fixed it.

I wont shop with him again.

My experience with K's years ago was piss poor (and I do believe I still have the emails to prove it).
Bought a high speed, it was messed up, had some battery damage sound didn't work. (I had no clue the issue, it was my first machine).
Sent board out for repair to him.
In the meantime I bought a refurb on ebay that was from coin op cauldron that worked great.
Board comes back, I leave it in box for a few month since I didn't need it.
I then buy a cyclone that needs minor board work, send that to him (which he did fix, then I resent him the high speed board)
I take the sys11 board out of the box reinstall in high speed and proceed to put the 11A in cyclone.
Well, the original sys11 that I had repaired, does not work.
Send it back to K's.
He then proceeds to tell me he never worked on it and it he would never let a board in his shop like that.
Umm, I only had one freakin machine when I sent it to him, I have the printed receipt and the paypal receipt.
Basically treated me like I switched the board on him.
Then refuses to send it back to me, says I can have a $100 credit with him, but no refund and no board.
I Let it go back then, but I would absolutely NOT today.

I also vowed I would tell this story every time someone asks about him.
Edit: I just looked up the emails, he said at one point I must have just asked him to "patch it up", because it still had the bad battery holder on it.
I knew NOTHING about pinball at the time. I left it up to his discretion.
I do still have the paypal bills, $145 for one board and $160 for the other.
I guess the good thing that came out of it, was I learned with the help of pinside to just fix my own damn stuff.
And if I really need work done (because I don't do battery damage), send it to chris hibler.

If you get a lemon board(it does happen) good luck you are fucked and will get an endless run around, you can be polite as all get out and talk tech jargon back and forth but you will still get massive attitude, no matter what-you did something to the board.

K's yeah, I think I would buy other places first... I am going to leave my comments there.

The initial concerns you had regarding the power supply sounded like the correct approach. Buy a new power supply board.

However, beyond that, it sounds like you are throwing money at a problem that never existed.

If you insisted on new boards beyond the power board "just because", I would strongly insist against doing that if I was your "tech".

If your "tech" suggested it, I would find a better (and probably cheaper) tech.

I can list so many reasons why but the biggest one is that I will refuse to work on a DE machine that contains repro boards where the components differ from what is on the schematics. I'm not going to spell out all the reasons here why repro DE boards tend to have problems. I just see so many misinformed pinball owners blindly throw money at a problem and to be quite frank, it just causes additional problems rather than solving anything.

Just an FYI, I've been repairing machines for 15 years and charge $50/hr for most repairs... I can repair nearly every problem call ON THE FIRST VISIT for the last 8 years and do not charge a trip charge.

I would use repro boards as a last resort. If it does not make sense to quickly and cheaply repair a board, then they should certainly be considered. Otherwise, most pinball boards can be quickly repaired on site by any tech that's been doing this for more than 10 years and can read a schematic. (wink-wink)

I have bought from Steve at Arcadeshop. Best prices and quick friendly service. Jim and his staff at rottendog are great. They will make it right.

So he'll never have this board in his shop that he has in the shop, charged you to fix it and basically stealing it for $100? Sweet!!! Or put another way, you paid him $45 to take your board.

Rottendog does all the testing, and provides NVRAM preinstalled on many types of their MPU boards including the MPU004, older MPU011A and MPU011C, and current MPU9211. Testing is done at Rottendog, the only further testing might be if processors and game ROMs were added. In this case the customer bought an MPU004 which came with NVRAM. Why they would try to sell him an in warranty item that Rottendog covers makes no sense.

Agree. That's why I suggested having his tech report issues. A non-technical person reporting a technical issue isn't a good idea. If it had been me, the first questions I would've asked is did you install the NVRAM or test the board. If K said it was all Rottendog (no game rom or anything else), the conversation would've ended there. I have had occasional issues with Rottendog boards and I've always dealt directly with them.

I should've caught the part about holding fuses and remembered it was a DE game. Those bad clips have made me a lot of money over the years. It's nice because once one side of a clip breaks, you can easily break the other side with a slight push of a finger while the customer watches. Customer sees the problem, understands they need a new board. The new board is cheap enough that it's a way better choice to replace it with a new, upgraded board rather than rebuild it.

Still don't recommend replacing every board in a game to 'freshen it up'. Doesn't make sense logically or financially.

I generally buy boards through Big Daddy and never had any issues. I have also spent thousands of dollars through K's for items that are simply not available elsewhere. I really like the Swemmer MPU boards because they use socketed ROMS rather than selecting the game with DIP switches. That said, K's customer support is a touch arrogant and basically assumes you know nothing and you are the one who did something wrong if you smoked a board.

In their defense, they are probably right most of the time (but still no reason to be snarky). I have seen it first hand and I'm even guilty of it. A board goes bad and smokes some coils. You replace a bunch of coils but don't notice that the knocker coil was also smoked. Replace the driver board with a new one from K's and poof, the shorted knocker coil smokes a driver on the new board so bad is burned a hole in it. And of yeah the previous owner of the game had replaced fuses with way oversized ones.

They sold me scratched up sling plastics, was a dick about it when I brought up the bait and switch since the photo was way nicer than my received product

I usually stay out of these kinds of discussion here on Pinside, although I do pay close attention to them. The fact that others share their situations is greatly appreciated.

It's unfortunate when people in this hobby/business feel justified in the negative treatment that has been shared here. Suffice it to say, I'll never buy from him and will definitely share that opinion every chance I get. There are enough honorable sellers here to not have to put up with his crap.

So I just had my first issue with a board with K’s arcade that I bought new. I sent an email to him discussing my issue. He gave a rude, arrogant, and snarky response. Like most Pinsiders, I spend thousands of dollars on stuff for our games. It’s our passion, our hobby, and our fun. Even if he said no sorry, we can’t do anything with that $400 driver board you just bought in December 2019, just 4 months ago, I wouldn’t be happy, but I wouldn’t be fuming and writing this message. I will never shop there again. I will never do business and I will tell everybody who I come across. He told me he has a T2 game with a rotten dog board in it and Never had any problems. So it must be the game. Anyone can come up with good or bad experiences. Then he told me to be respectful of his private time. ( how do I know his schedule? Don’t answer if you’re off the clock then) Then He said the warranty is expired. Then for the icing on the cake He said driver boards don’t burn for no reason. So is response to everyone is it’s the games fault. Maybe in 75 percent of the cases it is. However don’t assume that or don’t use that as your out, a way to save money so you don’t have to take care of your customers. Then I sent another email still being polite for and respectful even though he wasn’t to me. He tells me he would be happy to look at the board for me.... however it won’t be free and I’ll have to pay shipping both ways. You know what, you might of saved $400 on not honoring your product, but you lost me and apparently many other customers future business. I will order for anyone besides K’s. Even if I have to pay more money. The fact he’s the owner is scary. At this rate he won’t be in business for long.

Do a charge back on your credit card. That's what I did to Ks.

Never even thought of it. What was rottendog official warranty?

Are you sure the issue wasn’t with your game? Why are you replacing the board?

I had 2 different technicians look at this game and found no shorts. Even if it was.... his response was rude. What company says respect my personal time.... how do I know when this person works. His comment is what made me boil! Also when I switched boards everything worked fine. Treat your customers with respect. That’s all I ask.

I totally agree. I was just curious why you were replacing it in the first place? Was the original board not repairable?

I have spent LOTS of money with Keith. I usually use him because he ships very quickly, but if you have a issue he can be hard to deal with. He always makes it right, but can take some convincing. I usually just throw up the fact that I have spent $XXXX amount of money with him this year and he needs to make it right and he does.

I can say that after reading these posts, I will NOT be purchasing from K's. It shouldn't matter if you've spent $0 with someone or if you've spent $1000. Someone worth supporting will support you as a customer regardless. There are too many other better customer oriented vendors to support, than someone that will take your money and leave you hanging. No way.

Non K's arcade related, I messed up on my Sorcerer and sent my MPU to Jerry Clause. Turn around time was about 2 weeks. Installed the board and was still seeing some issues. Jerry communicated with me via email to help me troubleshoot the issue, and he offered to take my board back FREE OF CHARGE (shipping was on me which is understandable), because he stands by his work. Before sending the board back for him to look at, he continued to help me troubleshoot my game, even though he could have said that the board was good as tested by him and just left it as that. This, to me, is an example of customer oriented service. Needless to say, I will continue to use Jerry in the future for any board repairs.

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. I was wondering as you indicated there was some time between when the board were received and when they were actually installed and tested, what that time period was? As a buyer, I would expect a DOA warranty of some sort, but this would typically have an expected time frame of say a 30 or 60 days at most, afterwhich, there is a certain onus on the buyer to have verified the products are good etc.

There are definitely growing pains in this industry, as it gets more popular, there is a huge opportunity for business, but at the same time, many of the incumbant services are more like hobbyists or small mom-pop shops, where they don't really care about growing, have eccentric ownership, or just not thinking in the business sense of growth and customer satisfaction inline with what we expect from say Home depot as a no questions asked scenario and so forth.

I've purchased multiple boards from Arcadeshop (http://www.arcadeshop.com). I usually end up just calling and talking to the owner to order (very nice guy who knows his stuff). While I've never had a warranty issue, they always have competitive pricing and are pleasant to work with.

This supports why K's responses are, at best, inadequate.

He's like a health insurance company, deny, deny, deny and hope you go away (or maybe worse, die).
Which is what I did, I was a noob and let it go.
Won't happen again.
Telltale sign would have been he left the original battery holder on my board.

Not going to comment on K's response, rude is just rude, but why would anybody expect them to warranty a product they didn't make?
Even Marco's will tell you, to contact the manufacturer, and K's arcade parts do come with a warning that the part should be installed
by a professional tec.

I would generally avoid K's because some of the same products were cheaper to buy elsewhere.

Sorry never used K's before but am wondering if this guy Keith from K's is on the Forum?

I sent him a board once and waited weeks longer than he said I would be taken care of. Each time I would email him every few weeks to inquire about when he thought he'd be able to get my board I would be told he couldn't get to my board because I was wasting his valuable time making him read unnecessary emails. I couldn't get him to give me an answer in each response. I'll only use him again for parts I can't find anywhere else.

His prices are very high.

Non pinsiders don't mind the prices. I did couple hundred in sales last night on ebay. Couldn't get those prices here as easily