I just had to contact Stern support for the first time in a few years. I forgot how bad their service is. It's actually really upsetting how much they charge for these games and how little they're willing to do to fix issues. I'm canceling my GZ premium order. I've had enough stern for now.

Maybe been asked but on a new game say it's 3 weeks old and a part fails. Takes 3 plus months to get the part.

Does the warranty clock tick on a new game waiting for parts if its unplayable?

Yes - but Stern's decision of if you are 'in warranty' or not has always been rather nebulous and tends to error towards the customer unless you've been an a-hole to them and they want to play hardball. In that kind of situation, I would just assume you explain the situation and they'd accomadate you.

Where are those Tshirts online?

The stories of people getting immediate shipment of their needed parts makes me scratch my head. My GZ came without a damn backbox key and with a damaged head decal. I chased for 6 months with my distro to at least get a copy of the key before giving up. I was told Stern 'approved' the request, but nothing was ever shipped to me. I finally broke into the backbox and swapped out the locks on my own dime and gave up on the decal. I'm amazed people get major assemblies rushed to their door when I couldn't get a 50 cent key that could have been shipped in an envelope. I can't say I was surprised at the outcome, though.

For future reference, ALL Stern games for the last 5-7 years, maybe more, use the H95 Happ lock/key. If you have or have access to a recent Stern, you could have gotten in, easy.

That's good to know, but this is the only Spike game I currently have. If the keys are so readily available, it makes even less sense that they didn't just send me one.

I use this same lock on all my home games. I've actually mailed a few sets out to people who have lost keys. I've probably bought 60 of them over the years.

I'd sell the thing and get past it. It's a thing. Not a matter of life and death. Your health, mental or physical is more important than a thing.

Take care of yourself. Please.

LTG : )

You have to give me notice. I'll take off work and kids out of school to see that.

Really sucks this is affecting your health. Stay in there.

I've had a lot of stern support/parts orders over the last several years and can personally attest at how far downhill it's gone in the last 12 months in particular. WTF is going on Stern? Terse replies and no replies are all I get now - even with distributor participation. A simple acknowledgement of the issue and fact-based follow up are all that is required. 'Hey, sorry to hear of your issue in trying to get part XYZ. Unfortunately, these parts are back ordered with no current ETA. We would love to help you out and ship you one when they arrive. We will follow up in N weeks with an update'

And it's even more insulting when it's for a game this is currently in production. Like why don't you have the parts? You are building these games now.

I contacted Pablo regarding a KISS cabinet node board and he had me do some troubleshooting and determined it was faulty. I asked about a repair and he advised to buy a new one. He indicated that they sell them for $70 and even provided a link to the Stern shop, but advised they are out of stock. I'm like, riiiiiiiiiight, the node board in EVERY spike game is out of stock? How are you building and shipping games? And I refuse to pay Terry's price of $200 for a $70 product. Love pinball life, but he's overpriced on the node boards. Most dealers are.

Imagine if some people got together and started creating open-source eagle files for Stern PCBs where anyone could order boards and populate them and do their own run for hard to get parts.

where is crazylevi with his stern apologist nature? where is literally ANY stern employee with an update? we know you're reading....

Probably because spectrum-1980s isn't a whiny newb and has a serious problem. No snarky comments towards him should be made.

That means they need to slow down on shipping new games IMO. They did a production run of a game that I have a back ordered warranty item for and I never got my part... how can they just leave a warranty order open for almost a year while running that game through production? It's greed or negligence if you ask me.

both.
They got their money from you via your distributor. That is when their service ended.
Hopefully; this recession will hurt them big time. (but not holding my breath)

Still waiting on a Led Zeppelin EM spinner. Two months and counting. Meanwhile, they pushed how many LZ Premiums through the line recently?

The only explanation is that the parts sourced for the line are procured differently from those being sourced for the parts department ( warranty ), if it's not, I guess you can draw your own conclusions !!

I’m starting to get some parts orders in so hopefully they are catching up

I’ve also been wondering why I couldn’t get parts for a game currently on the line but guessing if they are building 100 games they are ordering 100 assembly’s for that run.

Stop
Buying
Stern
Games

Start
using
CC
chargebacks.

How does that work? Hurts the distributor and yourself more than anyone the message won’t be sent to Stern. Plus the window to do that is likely closed between the time the order is placed and the time your game breaks let alone any parts shipment delay is realized.

You buy the item from a retailer (You don’t buy it directly from manufacturer). The retailer is responsible that you will be taken care of, if you are having having issues with your $10k electronic device.
If you don’t get it fxed (just ignored) in reasonable timeframe, them yes, someone gets burned. And as a consumer, you don’t have to worry about how they share the costs between them. If you are afraid to hurt their feelings, then nothing will ever change.
Can you name any other electronics/machinery that you can buy as a consumer, and expect to be trated like this when having warranty issues?
Also for such an expensive thing, chargeback after 3 months should not be an issue.

No I don't get hurt as a consumer when practicing my rights. I'll get my money back.

You buy the item from a retailer (You don’t buy it directly from manufacturer).
The retailer is responsible that you will be taken care of, if you are having issues with your newish $10k electronic device.
If you don’t get it fixed (just ignored) in reasonable timeframe, then as a consumer, you have a right to cancel the deal and return the item.
Yes, someone gets burned. And if enough retailers get burned they start demanding some kind of guarantee from manufacturer. But you don’t have to lose your sleep on how they handle this between them. If you are afraid to hurt their feelings, then nothing will ever change.
Can you name any other electronics/machinery that you can buy as a consumer, and get such lousy support?
Also for such an expensive thing, chargeback after 3 months should not be an issue.

How many other commercial vending equipment pieces do you buy and are comparing this transaction to?

And 'chargebacks' are not the same as requesting a refund and completing a RETURN of equipment.

Nm

I'd be surprised if a chargeback would work in this situation, especially with how many parts shortages there have been since covid. CC contacts the distributor, distributor says we're trying our best but the manufacturer can't source parts. Case closed.

That would be a lie. They can and do source parts, but choose to build games and not fulfill parts orders with those parts.

It was a left-field comment that isn't even relevant really.

It's a warranty issue. Open a chargeback and the CC company is going to say "did you return the product or try to?" -- and you answer "no" it's done. The credit card company doesn't refund full 6-10k purchases over slow warranty claims.

For replacement parts orders... there isn't even a purchase made yet, so the 'chargeback' point is moot.

The other poster is in the EU where they have much stronger consumer protection laws where the retailer is actually on the hook for the performance requirement. Including options to withhold payment, require refunds or partial refunds if the faulty good isn't replaced or repaired within a reasonable amount of time.

It's on the seller in that case to fight back with the manufacturer/channel and is liability they are accustomed to. It's a mindset that doesn't apply the same here.

Sure but you'd have to convince the CC company of that. Maybe you can, but I don't think it would be a simple chargeback like other situations. I think flynnibus is correct the way he describes it.

Comparing it to any other home entertainment system I can buy, since they sell them directly to consumers (not companies only). But as you mentioned in the next post, I guess we are living in another world (EU).

We also have a thing called "life expectancy" for electronics and home appliances. It's usually around 4 years. So in case your fridge or playstation breaks down after 2 years. Even though it had 1 year manufacturers warranty, retailer has to replace or fix it (including shipping costs). This was invented to fight back planned obsolence and bullshit warranties.
Retailers have agreed to all this on day 1 when they decided to start the business. So I don't have to worry about hurting their feelings.

I know you don't have all that in US, but what I don't understand is that you're not EVEN TRYING to use the one option you do have. In case you got screwed over when you bought a $10k machine and you are not taken care of when it's inoperable. And yes, Stern has parts, they just choose to put them in new machines, because warranty replacements don't make any money for them.

Issue the charge back; send an email to your distributor that you wish to return the game (at their cost) at the same time.
The poster ViperVS lives in ... likely a europe country with better consumer rights.

The point is we all know that Stern won't take a game back... and neither will a distributor.
As a result; "lemon law" should apply - but won't.
The only way stern corrects this behavior is to actually get pressure from multiple sources.
That pressure isn't great enough yet.

A CC charge back would really only work for non delivered item. Good luck explaining to the CC you have a perfectly good looking, damage free, pinball machine, but just waiting on a part.

How about 4 weeks old $10,000 machine that is dead and/or not working as advertised? Also completely ignored or not given any ETA about the fix by the retailer and manufacturer after several attempts to contact them?

That’s just it… it’s not ‘any other home entertainment system’. It’s commercial vending equipment.

And even in your country… the credit card company is not the arbitrator of consumer protection disputes.

Not true in our region. But probably true in yours.
As mentioned before, If they sell it directly to a consumer/home, they have to comply with EU consumer laws. Also "commercial vending equipment" is a bit of a stretch even in US market, since 90%+ are sold directly to homes.
Would this machine be treated any differently in US?:
"Stern Pinball’s Star Wars™ Home Edition™ is a new stylish, affordable and fun pinball machine designed and engineered for the home."

True. We don't have to get them involved. But do you have any other options?

I'm starting to understand now that you are screwed over there. So your only option in US is to vote with your wallets?

The CC chargeback isn’t a thing here for a few reasons. For one, once you’ve paid the statement, it’s very difficult to dispute a charge. And secondly, you took possession of a working machine with no damage or issues. 45 days later, you file a dispute. The merchant immediately represents the dispute showing the machine arrived and was accepted with no issues. CC company immediately sides with the case of the merchant. Dispute closed.

In all reality, there’s no excuse for how Stern has handled this and many other similar situations, but at the same time, this is the unfortunate world in which we currently live. Parts, materials, labor shortage etc. it’s all snow balled into where many of us find ourselves. While I certainly side with spectrum-1980s (as I’ve had a similar issue) you could look at it from the stand point of at least you’re in the position to make this capital purchase. Many of our local, national and global neighbors are far less fortunate these days. Dude, just keep after your distributor and Stern. Your parts will arrive eventually. And I’m saying this from the standpoint of an amusements operator. We’ve had machines which we cannot source replacement parts for and have either pulled that piece of equipment for a lesser machine that’s fully operational or looked around the route and pulled some under performing machines to use for parts or replacement piece. I’m not kidding when I say that when TouchTunes was having all their parts issues, we pulled two Virtuo jukeboxes for either an older model TouchTunes or an AMI so we would have two spare monitors, computers, power supplies and control boards. Hell, I pulled some duck catcher cranes and put in other cranes just because we couldn’t buy the damned 2” rubber ducks for the better part of 2021, and when we could, we could get 20% of what we needed and were paying 70% more per duck. Crazy times.