Seems pretty scammy if someone were to "buy" with the intent to just return it. Aside from that I doubt Amazon is willing to eat return shipping costs so you'd probably eat a $500 loss out of your purchase price.

Last year in October I bought a SW Prem off of Amazon. Back when a Stern price discount was unheard of, and Prem's climbed to $9K+ I stumbled on a ridiculously attractive discount on Amazon for what seemed like an earlier run NIB SW Prem. Obviously I had some concerns. The other Sterns weren't discounted, and the description didn't mention Stern IC. Figured I may be risking getting something damaged a reboxed trade show model...etc.

Without a distributor in the middle I knew there was going to be some risk on what seemed too good to be true, so I read through the return policy before buying. There was a clause in the "items that can't be returned" section that included things that had shipping restrictions. Keep in mind it's also very hard to get a NIB unboxed and set up without damaging lots of the packaging. In my head, I figured "shipping restrictions" may include me wheeling a folded-up unboxed 250lb machine into Kohl's w/ an Amazon return number and none of the original packaging.

But since the price seemed too good to be true, I jumped at it and figured I'd deal with any issues after the fact. Still thinking I was getting a factory second, an older run...etc., what showed up was something 2 weeks off the production line, in mint condition, and with Stern IC installed. Thing was perfect out of the box and I only had to tweak the hyperspace loop for consistency.

TLDR - I had a very good experience buying direct, but YMMV. I'd see if you can contact customer support and asking about the return policy up front. If you really want to play a game for 2 months (usually 1 mo, but as OP mentioned, these qualify for the extended holiday return window of 1/31/24) and have to break it all down, prep it for shipping and whatnot, go nuts. Just try to hash out the return policy in full and know what you're getting into if that's your endgame. You will get a lot of "what did you think would happen, especially in Hawaii???" replies if you start a thread in February about your mint NIB JP Pro that you tried to "rent for free" in a remote location but couldn't return.

You should probably just read the return policy. Like most electronics, I assume it would have to be unopened, damaged, or not working.

I'm just curious - if you were a retail store or a pinball distributor and someone did this to you - how would you react? Positively or negatively?

PS - I think your avatar is a reference to The State? Awesome.

Just buy the extra amazon insurance policy to go with the pin. That way you can complain till the cows come home on the basis of your insurance policy and my guess is, eventually the policy pays off and gets you to go shut up and go away. Insurance pays for it, and you paid for Amazon insurance that the game would be perfect for extended time. Seems fair in my book. YMMV

Turns out this won't work. I put a Premium Venom in my cart and tried to check out.....no insurance policy is offered. Also, I can't find an Asurion plan for 10k to add separately.. Doh!

doing this should technically put you in the scammers list !

somehow just doesn't seem right !

This is a great way to hop on the tail end of the home market pinball bubble before the burst....You can buy at top dollar price on a 30% credit card and make monthy payments. Thats nice!

No free returns on this item.

When you say “all for this”…do you mean spending your time and energy to basically get a machine shipped to Hawaii, then having to somehow coordinate shipping it back, all within 60 days, to play “for free” for a few weeks and probably ultimately get stuck with it anyway because it’s obviously a scheme?

Even if this absurd idea did work, how valuable is your time? Seems like a monumental effort to try and give Bezos the business by costing him nothing since the game would just go back to Stern anyway at the end of the line leaving them holding the bag.

Just buy a used pro and then sell it a few weeks later if you want to play “for free” for a month or two.

If it seems too good to be true...

I have never been comfortable with the notion that because a company or individual is successful and makes good money it is ok to attempt to take advantage of them.

Unless that company is Walmart. F*** Walmart.

Amazon takes advantage of its entire workforce on a daily basis with their abusive practices.

Fuck them!

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!

REFUNDABLE PINBALL MACHINES NOW!!!

There are these places I hear, that have already bought machines, where you can go there, play them, either through tokens, or a cover charge, sometimes they sell booze, sometimes they don't. You could maybe go there? Or do this convoluted thing I guess.

This, unironically.

Great. Now you've given the OP the idea to buy it from Amazon, put it on route for a month and then send it back-haha.

Agreed, but at this point I'd say Amazon is even worse than Walmart in terms of labor practices, market manipulation, etc.

Oh, I thought you were asking if the general public should do it, not just yourself. You already established they don't ship to you anyways.

C'mon Blueberry....you're better than this.

Pfft, why even return it. Say a porch pirate got it. Then demand a replacement for the stolen package! (and then return the replacement)

As an aside I once bought a 75" TV on Amazon and hated the quality of it. It was free to return, but what a fucking pain in the ass to repackage it and drag it through a UPS store.

I don't know why I'm still bothering to explain this, but this isn't how it works. The manufacturer, in this case Stern, makes a product and sells it to a retailer, in this case Amazon. You buy from Amazon. You return the product, in this case a pinball machine, to Amazon. You need a reason to return the product (hence the refund policy). If the product is defective or damaged, Amazon goes back to Stern for their money and now it's Stern's problem. If it's not and you just decide you don't want it, they're stuck with it, however...that's why there's the return policy.

While I'm all for screwing Amazon and Walmart, I don't think pinside is the first hive mind to come up with this brilliant caper.

This, to me, looks like the beginning of the end of Stern as we know it. Obvious they need to scale down and regroup.

First, suggest dropping the the idea of play and return unless there's a valid reason for return.

But unless Amazon is listed an an official Stern distributor, and I don't see then listed (https://sternpinball.com/find-a-distributor/), I'm not sure what's going on here. Perhaps some arrangement between Amazon and Stern or Amazon and some other distributor?

Well, you "understood" it but made the thread asking about it anyway, so I guess my work here is done!

OP sounds like a class act.

Do others have "bin stores" in your area, or is that a phenomenon that's local to me? The concept is that these stores buy truckloads of crap -- mostly items that people ordered from Amazon and returned to Kohl's or wherever -- then toss it all into large troughs and set a reducing price per item (say, $8 one day, $7 the next day, etc.) until most of said crap is gone. People go nuts digging through the bins in hopes of finding the rare $8 espresso machine or whatever, and Amazon gets to offload all the "returns" that they don't actually want, you know, returned.

I wonder if they have a bin big enough for a pinball machine.

People who find it ok to screw the big guys "Wal-Mart, Amazon, insurance companies, etc" to get even for whatever their perceived injustice is forget that their actions don't occur within a vacuum. Those costs are never just absorbed and are always passed back to other consumers in price or rate increases. Ever wonder why Prime goes up ever couple of years? Its not just fuel, delivery prices, or corporate greed. Do us a favor and if you wish to send "them" a message, just shop elsewhere please.

Yeah! All you people who are going to take advantage of this imaginary way to screw Amazon which we established hours ago will never work TAKE YOUR FANTASIES ELSEWHERE!!

Imagining stealing pinball machine rentals from Amazon raises the imaginary prices of our imaginary rental scams from other companies too!

It's not a vacuum!!!

So you're saying we have no one to blame for inflation but ourselves? Phew. For a minute I thought it was wreckless government spending with zero accountability for perpetual money creation from thin air and no actual production.

This post just totally reminded me that after making my toast this morning I forgot to pack the toaster & ship it back ... FUCK! Not too sure if I want to tho cuz it was really good toast :/

Since your "return it to Amazon" scheme won't work, have you considered starting an investment fund?

You could claim that you are investing in insurance policies, to induce people to invest their retirement savings, but actually use the money to start your own pinball company. I hear that pinball is easy...

This thread has gone from SUCK to BLOW

STB (resized).png

I admire how much of a pin-junky you are for this to enter your mind.

No ethics. Shameful post.

Amazon has no ethics. Shameful company.

But so many bargains! Let me just finish checking out...

This is the Stern Amazon store, I don't think they are selling it to Amazon. They are shipping direct.

There are many businesses that use Amazon and Walmart ecommerce that use their own warehouses and shipping and never transfer ownership to the platform.

So this is really a sneaky Screw Gary thread not a Screw Bezos thread.

I don't believe that he was actually recommending the scheme, just trying to point out that it was possible. Until he realized that it wasn't...