Its a douchewagon post, much like the cayenne itself, but he's under a bit of stress.

100% not the case here - The work done to this game was 100% approved by JOSEPH

Post anything which shows he agreed to pay $4,200.

You be happy he didn't work on your Cayenne.....

Well I’m sure the last straw was listing the game for sale with no documented attempt by nifty to get the guy this game for the agreed upon cost or something inbetween that and the final cost experienced.

Nifty did a terrible job estimating/managing this project and had cost overruns. Unless the customer approves those through a change order, nifty eats it. Plain and simple. It happens. They just need to get this game to the OP for 2550 and call it a day.

But did you give him a detailed listing/summary of everything with included costs so he could see that the original $1850 was going to be seriously overrun?

So he agrees to do chrome but doesnt have to pay for it? Thats how that works?

You're not helping anything

That’s what I’d like to see, otherwise I don’t believe Nifty even a little bit. Just by reading his comments, I am getting the impression that he is a shady character.

Maybe you’ll start caring about the value of items like that after your profits drop from your businesses due to the handling of this matter. I for one won’t ever buy your product as you’re shady at best.

Sticky and Nifty: There has to be a solution here and for the sake of your business (nifty) I would work this out asap.

There is not $4K+ worth of work here and just giving the guy $800 for his game is seriously shady business. Taking 2.5 years to do the work and almost doubling the quote is insane as well. Can you 2 not agree to a mutual amount somewhere between $2500 and $3000?

You're not doing yourself any favors.

I have been in the "service business" most of my life and I would always call a customer if there was a major change to work being done or cost. With something like this machine I could see a couple hundred over original quote but you can't up your cost by over $2000 without customers OK regardless of you reasons.

Second - you can't put machine up for sale for at least 90 days - if at all. You must give owner time to get machine regardless of "what you think".

Third - you are luck not to end up in court after having a machine 4 times as long as you agreed on originally. Owner has been more than fair so do the right thing or destroy your business & end up losing in court.

There might be two sides to every story but as a business owner your side seems very weak at best!

Chrome doesn’t cost over 2k. The point is you did a bad job of communicating significant costs to the OP. And according to him the chrome was included in the 2550

For me, I think Nifty either...

A) wanted to keep the game after seeing it turn out so beautifully based on marketing responses on their social media pages

B) wanted to keep the game from the client and resell it for a major profit, especially since Hefner died since he took the machine and that could inflate the value

C) thought based on the OP’s money that jacking the price up was fine and he’d make extra cash in the end since the client could afford it

It’s the holidays man... do the right thing and agree to the price of materials used here and make it right. It took two years and you failed over and over again at hitting your deadline.

The community is watching...

This all added up, slowly over time

Do you want to do this? Yes, Do you want to do this? yes - over the 3 or whatever many years ive had this game...

I think nifty, jar and OP need to start a business together.

this is part of the problem. A almost 3 year restore?

Nifty says $1,850 was the original price to paint the cabinet and shop the game. What did the OP think was included for the original price?

And in as little as 5 hours a business has been destroyed.

Guys like this sure make me appreciate the good honest people that we have in our area!

Your piss-poor decision making is going to lead to the destruction of your business. I'm sure this thread will get brought up every time people see you post now.

Doesn’t matter. You listed items and a price. He agreed to said price. Those costs ended up being way over what you anticipated. He didn’t agree to that additional cost. You eat that additional cost or meet somewhere in the middle. Pretty simple.

Just a suggestion ..... with the Pinball Amigos moving their build to Saturday can we hit the pause button on this topic and bring it up again tomorrow to fill the Amigos original time slot?

Please continue .... (man stepped away for 30 minutes and there were 160 new post)

I don't agree with stating what you own as a valid reason for any of this. Many including myself have way more than you do. You are young and maybe associate what you have as who you are, but I don't think this is the case. Somewhere communication is the problem or you discovered spending that much for an old pin was crazy especially once we have all seen the CA secondary market take a dive.

But did you ever tell him what additional costs were going to be associated with all these additions? Maybe he was a bit naïve thinking all the upgrades would be included in the original budget, but as a businessman, you have the obligation to inform your customer.

This is literally the dichotomy of Pinball for me and my hesitation to go deeper in the hobby financially.

Actions and reactions by Nifty are what scares me to get deeper into this hobby with hiring ‘professionals’ to help, or buying expensive items from start-up companies like this. Very scary stuff with businesses like Nifty out there.

Then you have the reactions from the very small Pinball community and it restores my faith in the hobby that people are looking out for each other, and willing to go to bat for someone they don’t know when it’s clear something foul is happening.

Despite situations like this, and several other high profile cases of fraud, I’m going to side with the good nature of the hobbyists in this community and PLAY ON!

I’d still like to know why it has taken three years to fix the game. That’s beyond insane!

Dude...Really? Niftyled (Daniel Buenrostro)
Let everyone be aware there is no need to buy LED's for pinballs from dealers anymore.
They all come from the same sources in asia.
Go to ebay, punch in your socket and voltage, you get many, many choices for LED's!
Merry Christmas Everyone, my helpful hint of the day to save money.

NiftyLED how exactly did you come up with that $4200 number anyways? Where's the cost breakdown? Parts, Labor, etc...

I don't want any part of that! Hah.

Everybody just needs to be made whole. Figure out what it takes to make it so nobody is eating any cost and everybody walk away from it. I know that Daniel doesn't want the game. I know that Nifty wants to be rid of the game. Obviously the OP wants his game. Just figure this out, it shouldn't be too hard.

I stopped restoring games for this very reason. I had a client keep emailing me "hey, do you think we can also do X, Y, and Z" throughout the process. I kept doing it. I did keep good records, and when it came time to deliver, he went silent on me. It took me threatening to show up to his house to figure out the issue: his wife didn't know how much he was sinking into it, and he was afraid it was too much. In the end, I gave him his machine and he covered all of my hard costs. I ate the labor and whatever else I lost in other work I had to turn away because I was busy with his project. The whole experience soured me from doing it. Margins were already razor thin, and it wasn't worth the effort. I'll do my own machines now, and I'll leave restorations to actual restoration businesses. This irks me because it all rings so familiar.

You should be scared.

There are plenty of buffoons like this in the hobby who have no idea how to properly operate a legitimate business and conduct themselves in a professional manner.

I would call my lawyer and plan to pick up my game at the end of the day for the price which was originally agreed to by both parties.

Bam! Game over. Give the OP his pin for the agreed upon price and call it a day.

Hey NiftyLED you need to learn how to talk to a customer without being an idiot. but quick question... Why did you steal your website URL and business name from Evan from Orange County Pinball in Fullerton, CA? His website has a "s" after pinball... www.orangecountypinballs.com and has been in business way longer than you have. Was it you goal to confuse customers since his company is so well known and has a great reputation?

The guy knows the price of bulldogs and TVs, not pinball machines.

I do similar work sometimes for folks. Whenever more work is requested, or issues come up, THE FIRST THING I DO is talk money. The guy kept asking for things and expected it would be free? That's silly. You kept agreeing/suggesting more work and never mentioned that this crappy game was turning into a money pit? That's silly too.

What's the cost of a nice bulldog go for these days anyway? I'm looking to impress my mailman!

Thanks. First thing to note. You contracted others to some work. That is stuff you needed to communicate right up front as the cost is easy to estimate.

All of the above gets me to about 2600 bucks. That’s basically what the op is willing to pay. You’re Labor needs to be severely discounted due to it taking FOREVER. So I say 3k and this goes away. But I say stick to 2500 due to trying to sell this dudes game. That was lame as hell.

Ill agree with you 100% here... there appears to have been a communication issue

They range from $1200-$2600. Don't forget the 2-3K in veterinarian visits per year though. They look perfect in the front seat of a 911.

Wow I was woke up this morning with multiple messages from customers who saw this thread. Thanks for the heads up

We are OrangeCountyPinballs.com out of Fullerton, CA and have a brick & mortar store.

Daniel Buenrostro is no way associated with us.

We have dealt with Sticky and he is a stand-up guy who bought a Champion Pub from us years ago.

Please do not confuse us with this big cluster.