I 100000% Agree with you!

EDIT: i mean till the other side comes out and flips everything.

Nothing personal....just the way they go.

Strange he wouldn’t respond. Especially with the number of mods sold on this site.

Dang, you got a pile alright…hope you get this replaced.

It's a fragile mod - I broke one of my posts by following their instructions but I just superglued it back together.

Trying to pry a screwdriver under the rubber ring (as their directions state) is just dumb. They should have the ring pushed off of the cutout and let the installer gently push the ring back over the cutout after tightening the screw. That's what I did on the second post and it worked much better.

With many mod makers this is not their full-time job, and it may take a while for a reply. Just because there is a delay in his reply, that does not mean they won't take care of you, give them some more time

So you're saying they haven't responded in 3 weeks? I find that hard to believe as they've always been responsive when I've had issues

I just spoke to them last week about an order. When speaking they had just gotten back into town from being on vacation the week before.

3 weeks without a response is unacceptable, I would be upset, but I’m sure they will make it right in the end.

I have never bought anything from mod couple. Some of the modders on pinside are awesome, others are not standing behind their products. Its getting really annoying! In future im probably only going to stick with those modders I trust and had good experience with.

Same exact experience when I got my BM 66 about 6 months ago. Didn't make a post, but bought a crapton of their mods. Atomic pile was broken in 3 spots. No response whatsoever to several emails. I figured it was my bad for buying these fragile mods and expecting anything different. I just don't order from them anymore due to the lack of support, response and service.

Yelobird https://pinside.com/pinball/community/pinsiders/yelobird
hasn't been on since June 3 so make of that what you will.

Oh wait yelobird is mod couple? I have bought items from him in the past no issues whatsoever. I think they have great support. Must just be not available rigth now, I would encourage OP to just be patient, Im sure he will respond.

Most likely they *gasp!* took a vacation and are digging through responses from the past few weeks while dealing with regular family and full-time job issues. Or there’s more to this story the OP is leaving out.

I don't care if they were on vacation, busy with their real jobs or if their house was hit by an asteroid. 3 weeks is way too long not to answer a customer who has an issue with one of your products. Just added them to my "do not buy from" list. I will remove them if they have a reasonable explanation. Reasonable. Not a lame excuse. I know there's 2 sides to every story.

Atomic Pile is the best mod for Batman'66. It's the first one I bought. It's a shame you had a broken one and couldn't get a replacement. I have no idea what happened in the OPs case or yours, but I do know that sometimes my ISP (charter) will just not deliver email at all if it thinks its spam. No spam box, no junk mail warning, just never gets to me. That's created some issues occasionally with pinmonk support. Also, if I get buried, shipping on the hot items and response times to emails are stretched out for a long time.

Every interaction I've had with the Mod Couple and Yelobird specifically has been good, so I can't imagine them letting the OPs problem linger now that they're back from vacation.

They aren't the best at post sale communication. I sent them an email 4 months ago regarding a POTC mod I had purchased and they never replied. I won't be buying from them again.

I wouldn't be happy without a response in three weeks but I also understand this is a side gig and gets low priority.

Yelobird Yo Dave. Please help these customers.

LTG : )

Dave is a good guy. You're dealing with pinball old men so you would be ok although i do agree 3 weeks is long. Knowing Dave be Silk take care of you.

3 weeks is a pretty long time. Even if you're on vacation, you have your cellphone. You can still get emails. I'm dissappimted to hear your news, op.

Did you pay with Paypal or a Credit Card?

Wow thats crazy! I was gonna order something, but sounds like they've flew the coop

Hope they are ok, maybe some health issue came up.

Little worried here, Dave/Yelobird has always been a great asset to Pinside and the pinball community.....hope everything is OK!!

Dave is a really great guy. He’s been nothing but enthusiastic and kind to me when I’ve asked him for help with my mods. I did notice that he hasn’t been on Pinside for awhile now, which is pretty strange.

I totally get your frustration. But I’m actually more concerned that something has happened to him, rather than that his behavior is “unacceptable”.

Yelobird has since been on Pinside again on 6/13 and still no response? Totally unacceptable.

He was on here on June 13th...

I agree there should be some arrangements made for communication, even if it's an out of office message while on vacation, etc. But with that said, let's all remember we have had sudden things pop up like illness, loss of a loved one, accidents, divorce, etc..... Yes, 3-weeks is a long time, but there have been covid patients that were in ICU for months......so let's not burn them at the stake just yet. It's just pinball, and it's not like this is a ventillator breathing tube a patient just has to have. I'm betting they are on vacation, or something else easily explained. Yes, it might be poor customer service.....but easily explained, as I know them to be pretty good souls.

Yeah they probably just logged in to see the whopping 7 different threads about Toy Story.
Dont get me wrong Im on one too and excited about it.

Any response or resolution yet?

I'm interested as well...I was gonna order some stuff, but have held off

I will contact Dave tomorrow for OP. Dave and his wife are very nice and very helpful to the pinball community.

Or you know what you could do first………..is ask if anybody knows the Mod Couple and try to contact them directly for you. This is a small community. Someone is always happy to help you out.
Going with the “Beware don’t buy from them” theme is your choice but there’s other options.
You simply could’ve started a thread that said “does anybody know how to contact The Mod Couple directly?-need some assistance.”
Just a friendly suggestion.

Please don’t pass judgement until you know exactly what’s going on .When I was just getting started in pinball ,he was a big help to me and even invited me and my 2 boys (without knowing him personally )over to play his collection and ordered pizza for us .I could see he was generally and honestly happy to be promoting the hobby to some newbs .We had a wonderful time and conversation and now I’m worried about them .Please if anyone gets ahold of him keep us posted .I really hope everything is ok .

I noticed his account logged in again today (6/24). I just sent him a PM to see if he is still in business, as I'd like something from his shop.

We'll see if I get a response.

I’ve purchased numerous items including the Atomic Pile and one things for sure, its a “pile” of something alright. One airball hit and it was toast. 3D printed items don’t last long in a pinball environment. Rocks around batmobile, also ball destroyed. Stern’s stock atomic pile is so much better lit and functioning as well. The lure of the show atomic pile is strong, but save your money and stay with Stern’s stock and you’ll be glad you did. Modcouple 3D printed items are not very good quality wise, even though they try hard to make them nice. It’s not their fault, but issue is with 3D printing, even though they have some cool designs usually. Grandpa Munster one airball only destroyed him. Don’t flush your money down the 3D printed junk hole. There is a reason Stern does not do anything 3D printed.

I haven't ordered from Mod Couple but he does do some creative stuff.

I will chime in on the 3d printed gear comment as it is very general just in case you are not aware of all the types of 3d printed quality gear. Really any 3d printing done on a home printer is subject to breaks, failure and integrity breakdown over the years from heat etc. While I have a home 3d printer I only use it for testing / proof of concept and then send out everything to be professionally printed, which is laser bound solid nylon, which is extremely strong and durable but one downside is it is not cheap.

I agree Stern use 3d printing to sample designs to get something right and then off for molding in rubber etc which is what you would hope for the volume and cost of the machines.

Not sure if the Mod Couple ever had a facebook but it is now empty.

Most of my stuff is underneath the playfield, so no airball issues, but I have transitioned to PETG pretty much exclusively and I usually use at least 70% infill. The only breaks I've ever had was during my short stint with coil stop-mounted 3D printed brackets. That was a teaching moment. There's a LOT of sustained force and vibration that hits coil stops continuously. Much stronger and more damaging than I imagined, so I had to go back to side-mounted brackets parallel to the forces. But aside from that, and a handful of layer defect prints, no issues.

I had Yelobird 's Atomic Pile mod early on Batman '66 SLE on location and had zero issues with any part of it breaking. It got a lot of play, and once I was called to the location to remove a trapped ball from the top of it, so there were airballs happening. I don't think it's an unstable mod, unless the parameters of print or material have changed since the one I got. Stern's impressionist pile is so atrociously ugly, I can't imagine leaving it.

Would think you are quite bias against Stern much of the time from your comments, so for you to say its ugly? Guess its the eye of the beholder, because many of us think its quite nice looking as well as functional. It matches all the other items on the pf and does not look out of place like 3D home printed items do. It definitely fits the description of an Atomic Pile, with its intense reds and powerful glowing lights, which Modcouple Atomic pile does not have. Try as hard as they can, but the 3D version looks quite rickety up close and even further away, questionable looks wise, although a good design. If it was injection molded with powerful glowing LED’s, well that might be different.

The 3D printing isn't entirely the issue, but in this case, as it's made as one piece there, the horizontal print lines leave an easy break point.

If I use my upcoming Stranger Things set as an example, the much thinner railings are printed on their side and assembled afterward, leaving vertical print lines (lines visibly removed with prep, primer, three paint stages, and clear). The vertical print lines make it so balls can repeatedly be thrown at the railings with no issue (if that diameter were printed with horizontal lines, it would easily snap...vertical, and they'll take any air ball).

It's been a learning process for me, but 3D printing does have advantages over resin mods, and vice-versa. I've done clay sculpt/resin as well (IJ PoA rails), and prefer 3D printing for a few reasons--one of the main ones being precision when it comes to consistently fitting within fractions of a millimeter.

------------------

Otherwise, my brief interaction with Yelobird/Dave was very positive. Hopefully all is well.

Your bomb-ass results are hard to argue with. Each set you do is better than the last.

Has anyone alerted Yelobird of the issue yet ? He’s usually pretty active on here - very rational and easy to deal with. I’m sure this is easy to resolve.

Yeah
Give him benefit of doubt.
Good guy

Putting Yelobird in posts makes an alert that links to this thread when he gets on, so there have been a number of posts with that @ call alerting him to this thread already.

EDIT: I hope something isn't seriously wrong with him or his family. Quickly perusing, it looks like his last post activity was here 5 months ago, and there are no mods at all on his site for Mandalorian, Godzilla, RUSH, or Toy Story - the last 4 pins released, which is weird. Seems like he came to a halt on pinside at the end of Jan, beginning of Feb, with just occasional logins since, but that's it.

Yelobird

Yelobird will come…
F823A73B-27A6-4610-85B1-6F071036A474 (resized).jpeg

He's had ample opportunities to respond on here. Pretty pathetic.