In a perfect world, hell yes. When you find that world let me know so I can relocate.
In this world, think you may be screwed unless the guy has a set of morals.

I dunno. Its a 20 year old game. If it was working when he left, that's really all you can expect. If I went through a game like that and tested the clock well and it was working, I would move on. $300 doesn't buy you a full tear down and rebuild of everything. It buys you a checkup. And yes, actually possible that things were working when left and that the guy isn't a hack. So I'd say that you are not entitled to anything for free here. Further, if you want to own a pinball machine, you should learn how to debug and fix these types of things yourself. TZ especially has a lot of issues and needs regular maintenance.

Amen. That's why I let mine go. There was always something it needed.

If you get a mechanic to go through a car before you buy it... he's not liable for any future failures.
Same thing with a home inspector...

You're getting an opinion and maybe some repairs for that moment in time. Unless they did something to trigger the failure... that's just life.

Look at the game and the harnesses.. who knows you may have something simple that's just shorting/etc.

I have to disagree. And anyone who charges $300 for a "check up" is simply taking advantage of a newbie and should be called out!

The right thing to do would be to come back gratis for that kind of dough. The clock has lots of different test to perform if I recall. Did he check each one or was it just a "visual" inspection. Costs less for a physical or to have your car looked at. Give me a break.

I wouldn't put it past some people to purposefully rig something to fail after a few games to earn a service call from a new "sucker" Ask around on this guy's local rep. I've known a few jerks in my time. Also some great stand up guys.
Pays to know who you are dealing with - in pinball and the rest of life.

Bottom line is these machines are "toys" not life & death. Ever call a doctor about something serious or go to an ER at a hospital. Hell you can sit there and bleed to death before anyone will do anything for you.

I know as the buyer this type thing sucks and it is also tough for the seller but give everyone some time. It is the weekend - it is less than 2 weeks before Christmas - some people have a life other than pinball.

As far as checking over a machine & then it having problems. I can tell you with all the stuff going on in one of these machines not having problems is more rare than having problems. Solid State machines are easier than EM's for the most part but just banging one around a little moving it can cause a bunch of problems let alone the fact we are talking about a 1/2 mile of wire, hundreds of possible things that can go wrong, etc.

So step back - take a deep breath - and give it a day or two before talking bad about a tech who my or my not be at fault here.

Just my 2 cents!

My question is how fast does someone have to call back? I tell people all the time I'll get back to them - sometimes I get back to them in 10 or 15 minutes and sometimes it takes a few days. I am not in the service business but I have been and sometimes customers expectations are unrealistic.

My advice would be to keep your hands out of the machine until you talk to them. Otherwise, I wouldn't blame the tech for charging you a second time. The last thing he needs is to have another set of hands involved. If he contacts you and says to check something that is OK but otherwise just give it some time.

Not taking sides - just saying - there is life outside of pinball.

If you don't hear back in a day or two contact him again - but for now at least give him a chance. After all it is the weekend - two weeks before Christmas. How many service people work Saturday afternoon or night anyway?

Yes I think he should warranty his work. If it is the same guy I have been using he can be a bit overloaded with work and sometimes is slow to respond but usually comes through at the end.

Shame this is happening and it seems he missed something.

In what country/state? The home inspection is not any type of warranty - it's an opportunity to have the property evaluated as a condition of your contract to purchase. The home inspector is nothing but a 'qualified' opinion and gives the buyer no monetary protection against anything - its simply a contract tool to ensure your contract to buy the house is conditional and empower you to know what you are buying. You may have dealt with a company that offers a warranty as part of their service offering (that they arrange with an underwriter) - but that's just an additional service offering from a particular company. Just like you as a buyer can buy an home warranty policy yourself. Neither are intrinsic protections as part of home buying or home inspections - those are just policies people offer you can buy into.

Agreed. And this is why I will only sell to other collectors. With pins it is not a matter of "if" it is going to break or have an issue, but "when". You learn quickly if you are going to be a pin owner to either learn to keep them running yourself or write checks. Sorry, harsh truth.

If the game worked for the first 4 games then that is what the tech may have seen. Older games are temperamental and new games have issues right out of the box.

Learn to fix them yourself and not depend on others to repair and maintain your pins. That is half the fun for me.

Yep here too. I tell everyone the same thing you can play one game or 50 but once it walks out that door it's yours. Scares some away but I don't get any headaches in return

From your description it sounds like the prior owner of the machine was the one who paid to have the guy go through the game. Did that occur at your house or at his and was it moved after it was inspected?

Give the guy some time. As others have said it's not your heating or your plumbing or your transportation, it's a toy.(and a very expensive one at that). As a fellow pinball tech I can tell you that things get very busy this time of year (actually it's been busy the entire year!!). It's also late on Friday and I would give him until Monday late afternoon to get back to you.

Interested in finding out what the issue turns out to be.On TZ's I won't mess with old clock boards, replace them with new boards or you are just wasting time and money. From your description however it sounds like a motor drive issue (the aux driver board) If it was moved and the head was lowered I would check out the ground cable on the upper right corner of the large driver board. Or make sure none of the connectors on the aux driver board just above it are loose.

Cannot agree more with this, and not just applying it to pins - you want it done right, learn to do it yourself.

Either way though, if you were charged $300 for that service, you bet your ass the guy doing the 'servicing' should come back and make it right (honestly, how long did he actually check out the machine? An hour and a half, max?... damn, for $200/hr I'll 'fix' any pin too); if he doesn't, it sucks and lesson learned... but seriously, if it doesn't work out to where the 'tech' comes back free-of-charge, take it on the chin and use that as motivation to learn how to fix your own pins and not rely on some CL pin repair all-star who may, or may not, stink of cheese and/or unwashed BO to make your pins bullet-proof (even though pins break all the time, paying some jack-off $300 to do it is crazy unless you literally have no time at all to learn/ask how pins work... but if you have time to play pins, you have time to collectively learn how fix them).

The best ally you have is Pinside/RGP, there are so many good people and knowledge here (and RGP) that if you start a thread and it's still not fixed, it cannot be fixed.

Give the guy more time ...its a weekend just before x-mas...im sure he has other things more important than your clock at the moment...probably should at least give him til Monday to respond...

I'm guessing there was no tech, just a fake invoice. That seems like a crazy price. CL find?

So its a lot different if say you called the guy out to fix the clock, which was broken. And then it broke again after he left. In that case, yes, he should warranty the repair and come fix it for free.

In your case, however, this is not at all what happened. You had the tech go through the machine and make sure it was in good shape. He did not make repairs to the clock. In all likelihood, the clock was also working when he left. The game is 20 years old. It is not possible to guarantee that every mech in a 20 year old game will be working perfectly forever, or even a day. The only way to do that is to spend a week and take every mech apart and rebuild it. That is obviously out of scope for a quick check up.

Pinball machines have diagnostics. A tech would run through these. There's an advanced clock test in the menu. If he ran through that and the clock was fine, played a few games and it was still fine, did not repair the clock because it was not broken, and it broke later, he is not responsible for fixing your game for free. That is unless you have some written warranty stating that he guarantees the game works perfectly for a specified amount of time. And any tech that would give that sort of guarantee (unless on a specific repair he made) would be an idiot anyway.

Finally, just moving a perfectly working game can result in various issues.

You posted a thread to get opinions. So here you go.

Haha. I'm a veteran auto tech and I'll tell ya, I do at least one goodwill freebie a day to help from other 'techs' diagnostics. Moms with kids, people broke from bills, cash grab gets you little sleep in this world at night. Thanks, but I'll take the goodwill and trust. Much better class of clientele.

Was the move from the seller to buyer's location done after the inspection, but before the clock problems started? If so, couldnt the move made the clock issue show up.

Maybe im too trusting, but until you talk to the guy, i dont think you should assume hes purposefully screwing you. Be skeptical for sure, but id want to hear his side before you warm up the bus to run him over. If he doesnt call you back in a week or so maybe start the bus up. Hehe

In the mean time you could inspect the wiring etc and look for anything fishy.

You didn't pay the $300, so you're not out any cash.

Stuff breaks. Learn to fix it yourself or pay someone to do it.

All that being said, $300 seems way out of line for an "inspection," but that's not what's important here.

-Mark

The owner said. Thats a give away to maybe something was looked at. You dont get into having pinball machines and thinking they will run forever. Not happening, either you or your checkbook will fix it.

I like this line when calling about a machine " it works great but we haven't turned it on for awhile " yep those are some exciting words there

I think that is 'Location Unknown'

The proper response here depends on the perspective of each of the three people involved:
- The Buyer: Paid a lot of money, $5000+, for the TZ, so they expected a fully "electronically" serviced game and should not have a broken clock - the main toy for TZ
- The Service person: Performed a system check, which when completed, the game seemed electronically sound; although he probably charged way too much for the time invested (but drive time/distance is unknown and electricians are expensive)
- The Seller: He sold a machine that he thought was fully functional (or did he?) and even paid for a service check

So, should the Seller and Service person put any more effort to make the TZ right?
Well, my question would be - what would the initial service charge be if a problem, like the clock issue, was found before the sale, $500?

The bottom line: The Buyer, in the long term, needs to be able to troubleshoot pin issue(s) themselves - heck, post a tech question here in the Forum. The Seller and Service person should help the buyer solve the problem, this would be the honorable thing to do, but they are not obligated to.

I would be scared to death if owned a TZ(or any pinball for that matter) and didn't know anything about fixing them. I have no opinion about the $300 inspection. The problem is NOT a typical clock problem. It does sound like a motor driver problem, as typical clock problems involve not recognizing the position on the hands, not a continuously rotating motor. Good luck too you. I'm sure you will get it fixed one way or another.

Hmm....I wonder if its the same very very well known "tech" that just went though a game for the previous owner the day before I bought it? $250 to replace the batteries in a holder that was already corroded beyond use and was being held together with solder braid to make the connection. The acid had also dripped down into the switch connectors and there was five connections that needed to be replaced to keep the game from freaking out during game play. It had also gotten into the large ground braid thats attached to the cabinet so that had to be cut out and replaced. One of the capacitor's on the board was broken in half. The Lock mech didn't function correctly and neither did the kick out. But he did change out the flipper rubbers and replaced the broken shooter rod. This guy got screwed big time !!

John P. Dayhuff
Battle Creek, Mi.
269-979-3836

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TZ was my first game. When I bought it, I didn't know shit. The first time something broke, I had to look in the instruction manual just to figure out how to lift the playfield.

My TZ has been "Rock Solid" I think if you buy a 20yr + game that has been played to death..you may expect to have to work on it more. But, if you get a true low play or do a expansive detailed shop on a overplayed. Should be like any other. Most every machine has it's nemesis..with TZ it's the clock or Gumball...once you upgrade those... I see no more issues then any other machine. At least with the small collection that I have. Even though I personally haven't had any real issues with my other machines
The BSD Nemesis is Mist ball
The NGG is the slam ramp
The SS may be the crate?

Scared to death? Wrong hobby.

So I just took off the flipper rubbers that this so called "tech" guy put on and what he did was he replaced them all right with used ones that were turned inside out. The original black ones which were beyond using at all were inside the coin box so I know thats all he did was flip these red ones over so that the nicer side showed instead. What a loser and its a shame too since he's so respected in the pinball community that he would rip this guy off by doing such rookie repairs and then charge him top dollar for doing it. What a shame.

John P. Dayhuff
Battle Creek, Mi.
269-979-3836

My Tz has been rebuilt all through out and is very stable. But the two machines I fix most for friends are TZ and sttng.

There is no way any tech, no matter how good, can "check out" your 20 year old game and guarantee that nothing will go wrong with it even 5 minutes later.

That is 100% fact.

The tech can look for common problems, fix any currently broken features and tune the game to factory settings, but a transistor can blow 5 minutes later and take out a coil.

Even if the tech tested that very transistor, it can still go bad in the blink of an eye.

=

If you took a 20 year old car to the dealership and asked them to "inspect everything" because you were going on a road trip, even an ace, factory trained mechanic could not guarantee than the alternator would not blow a diode 5 miles down the road. Heck, even a brand new alternator could blow a diode 5 miles down the road.

Like Jersey Jack said "If it ain't broke, it ain't pinball".

Has one of my TZ parts right now in fact and fixed my other TZ we had recently and the STTNG just before that lol

think your expectations are a bit high. As far as a call back, a call back is courtesy and given the holiday season I would allow plenty of time for any return call on a non emergency type of item. If your furnace is dead and the temperature low enough to burst pipes, I could get a nervous or angry at a delayed call back, but here we are talking about a game for entertainment.
IMO before any work was done the tech should explain the nature of a pinball machine and explain that even though he would be going through it, there is some element of risk that would be assumed by the buyer/new owner...as Vid said it is very difficult for a pin tech or an auto mechanic to put a guarantee on work like that. If they do, they are assuming an awful lot of risk.
Ultimately, the tech and owner should discuss the terms and nature of the work done and any warranties before even touching the game. If it is in writing as to what kind of after service failures could occur, they should be honored. I would expect the warranty to be very limited in scope, since even moving the game can cause a problem.

I repair games on the side. I have a implied warranty - if a problem shows up even if it's not related to the first repair I fix it for cost. Nothing worse then paying the rates that we charge an not having a working game regardless of the reason. I think at 300 no charge is in order

Yikes!

Unacceptable from anyone with any amount of knowledge on properly repairing pins.

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
borygard at gmail dot com

Yes sir. This guy has been in the repair/retail business for probably 30 years I'm guessing. Totally unacceptable.

John P. Dayhuff
Battle Creek, Mi.
269-979-3836

Why not call him out then?

My 2 cents. If you were paying him by the hour to do certain things, that's one thing. But you paid $300 for a working game, and you didn't get a working game.

How long was he there? Even at $75/hr which is high IMO that's 4 hours of labor.

He was paid $300 to ensure a game works, and it doesn't. These machines are 20 years old and they do break, but 5 plays? That's not a coincidence, just a broken machine.

Besides. Any decent pinball tech knows some problems are intermittent, and if you take $300 to certify a game working, you have to understand that it might not happen in one trip.

Probably not fair to do since he isn't the one who contracted with the repair person. There could be other facts that of which the OP is not aware.

EDIT - I see you might of been talking about the Dayhuff example.

My opinion:

You should relax a bit and see if the "tech" will eventually return your call. Friday, weekend, Holidays, ........ the schedule can get a bit tight and I don't blame the tech for not wanting to do his day job on the weekend.

As for the price - seems a bit steep but I don't know the surrounding circumstances. Distance, hours spent, parts required and customer attitude can play into the pricing scheme.

Maybe try calling and leaving one more polite message?
Most of us service guys are really pretty nice folks. Likely to give you the shirt off of my back if you are desperate. Sometimes it feels like I'm running a charitable enterprise. Just be cool for awhile and see what happens.

We service folks get beaten up on every job.
Every person for whom I work must think that I've got some exorbitant profit margin from which I can instantly produce discounts in the form of free work, free parts, free diagnostics (I get the "free estimate" calls all the damn time.........sheesh). '... Would you please drive to my house, diagnose my problem, tell me what that problem is, give me an "estimate" for repairs, and then I'll make a decision. And while you're here, I need you to be certified, licensed, bonded, insured.........'

I'm also a customer - and I respect your opinion in the original post. I suspect that the original service tech may also understand your position indicated by his calling the seller in this deal in order to compare notes. If you keep your cool, all is not lost.

Just trying to help you see things from the service side. We're leery of taking another fleecing - especially this close to winter.

These machines break. One second everything is great... and then ***thud*** something is wrong.

If the machine was working when he left, then the ball is in your court (unless he specified a warranty)

What about intermittent issues? It's possible the machine wasn't working when he left, but didn't display the symptoms right then and there.