PM'd WeirPinball

Been designing up some custom cab art for my remodel...so similar to LV! had the eggs along the sides...

Another Monday hoping to see games arriving at Cointaker.

Did the boat drop the games off in NY?

Yea same here. It was 21 days ago that the boat was slated to be in any day. After a while you start to wonder if there is a boat coming in at all, or it was just an assumption.

I pinged Melissa over the weekend to find out what my 'LV' number was as I was considering the PB auction of the 426 dog tag.
I got this response:

"We will let you know this week…right now with the holiday, we are trying to get all of the orders out we can and in between we will be answering these emails.'

So maybe the latest shipment are on their way from CT?

I did email last Wednesday and heard that the second boat has not yet landed for what it's worth.

Last I heard I still have #2, But I haven’t received any final billing yet. It does say the auction will remain open until the game is ready for shipping so who knows how long that’ll be?

So I hosted the DFW league finals and tournament this Sunday and Alien held up beautifully and there was 44 people registered for the tournament and even between when the tournament was playing Alien there was always somebody playing that game for 12 hours straight and it never had one issue all day performed like a champ. I did do a few minor tweaks like realigning the upper flipper to shoot the hyper sleep ramp and it makes that shot every time now even with all the flippers set a default power. I also removed the plastic wraps off all of the flipper coils to help them to stay cool as well as they added three of these fans in the bottom of the cabinet that are directional to aim them at the flipper coils to help keep cool this was a simple quick solution in a pinch but seem to work well. So it seems there’s no need to overpower the flippers if everything is set up correctly and that will also help keep the flipper coils cool in the flippers never got weak all day long even with constant 12 hour use

13FEBDEF-8DED-4D36-AB7B-8A8459D15C62 (resized).jpeg

3D624CE8-6875-4FCD-AD89-28EC5A6D3935 (resized).jpeg

59D707E5-A8CB-41D0-B836-1190A24E26CE (resized).jpeg

5B3DE3A5-5ACD-46E9-B9FF-5BCB867E2EC3 (resized).jpeg

936283B2-92A4-4C0E-BEE2-EB5AB74A371A (resized).jpeg

Have you ever had issues with the ball trough getting the ball into the shooter lane? Sometimes the ball on a save does not shoot out of trough with enough power than ends the ball.

when I first got it ,. it was kicking 2 balls out once in a while but have not seen that since the 2.4 update ... don't know if that had a fix for that ???

Cooln info Great pins..

Does anyone have coil equivalent info for off the shelf replacements if needed?

that was my orig # with Heighway. I was hoping it would come back with my LV order

oh well

My upper flipper was aligned the way you describe from the start

Well since they are doing the auction for LV-426 different ask Melissa maybe you can get it.

Funny how i went from no interest to buying an SV so fast on this one. I watched that netflix the movies that made us on Aliens and got all pumped. Heh. Now I have one on order with CT and that custom apron as well.

While numbers sound kind of cool they are not worth more than numbers 425 or 200, etc.

Now maybe someone that has LV-1 might have the “first” one can claim it was first off the line. But I don’t even think that is true since they will be made out of order.

Apparently this machine is now delayed until February - so it's still open if anyone wants to buy out my spot. Not going to make it for Christmas though.

Why delay? Not in next batch/boat? Or are they moving up LVs?

I have no clue what the f is going on. Apparently not that many are in the next batch

"Scott’s game would not be until February sometime.

They ran a little behind due to fixing some of the issues that were in the first few games…but they are getting games out the door right now.

Sincerely, Melissa"

edit - just a refresh - this is invoice #093133

This is getting confusing as F!
From Cointaker seemingly not communicating in a coordinated fashion to different people hearing different things it's crazy.

Did he mean Stern Godzilla Premium was delayed or Alien SV?

I wish we had a place to go to find out if our units were indeed in production, completed, shipped, and waiting for Sigourney Weaver to off loader it at Cointaker! Please!!

My Alien SV won't be here until Feb (hopefully)

Don’t leave LV-426 without it !

3FD2985F-F53E-4E71-BD3E-4C9CA4E9EDDF (resized).jpeg

The bid for #426 is over $2000.. yikes

Is there a place to see this?

I assume you mean $2000 over list price?

Edit - this is just bidding for the dog tag and 1st one to leave the factory. I just reread my email.
That’s insane $2k bid. Look at the link above and get a dog tag printed to whatever number you want.

Wow

It's on the PinballBrothers FB page.

https://www.facebook.com/pinballbrothers/posts/875583006487887

Glad it's for a good cause...but...???

Does anyone have a good tutorial showing the rules of this game?

I'm still not sure what I'm doing here

How much did u pay your distributor to open the box and play the first few games on it!?

Agree, glad for a cause.

Cuz $2k for dog tag you can generate in 2 mins is way out of line.

I used your link and in 2 mins I got this with out even trying.

Now if I spent a bit more time I probably could get 100%

Man this pinball world and prices have got way out of control.

FF24C472-36E8-416E-8741-0940A8B75E58 (resized).jpeg

Here:

https://pinballbrothers.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/80000707814-alien-game-rules

$300 AUD Including delivery and setup.

Yea, if anyone knows a universal message that would be awesome. I heard on 11/29 that the container would be in "any day" and then last week that the container had not yet showed up but they would let me know.... But nothing about a February delay. I wish I knew what to expect.

Bottom right flipper has started to die. It works intermittently and also "flickers" intermittently (not it's whole stroke). Have checked flipper button leaf switch contact(s) which seem fine.
Any ideas?

Typical Cointaker.
Same shit they pull with TBL.

Others have said this is about DP or PB being late. Understood that they have delays - makes sense. However, Publish a list of that shows people where they are in line. Publish the serial number and date…and then email people their serial number. Easy!

Instead in the TBL thread like this thread people are guessing…..”I reserved/ordered before you but why did I not get contacted!”

Messy messy Cointaker - common spend a few minutes and clean this up. Or maybe they like it this way so they can move people up in-line that are better customers?

Make sure your APC target bank reset coil isn’t shorting to coil stop.
Also check the flipper wires aren’t broken inside the heat shrink

To Australia

100% agree with you!

https://www.flippermarkt.de/community/howto/cms/media/pages/pdfs/anleitungen/Rulesheet_Alien_V1_2.pdf.pdf

here you go.

Heat shrink where the wires meet the coil board for clarity if you needed it. Mine were a bit sketchy so i slapped some new solder on there.. all good.

I swapped out the 2 coin door incandescent bulbs with 6v LED's and they got very warm and one burned out. The number on the incandescent bulb is C101, which looks to be 6V. Anyone else tried this yet?

Those bulbs are all 12V.

Anyone else have problems with their game acting as if the ball has drained even though it's still in play? Or alternatively adding extra balls when it clearly shouldn't? I have updated to 2.4 and still have the problem. Doesn't happen every single game, but often enough to be very frustrating. Contacted Cato about this several days ago but have yet to hear back from him.

So I've been following this thread and the frustration has finally hit me. I have a lot of patience for delays and it doesn't really bother me as I have other machines to play and understand the global supply chain constraints currently in full force.

What is bothering me is being told things that aren't true. I paid my invoice in Sept and was told the machine should arrive within 30 days and was shipped. I called once 30 days hit and was told it'd be there in the next 2 weeks and was in transit.

It has now been over 60 days and I'm wondering if I'm just being fed a line of continuous bullshit which is what upsets me. It also bothers me that I've paid in full with the commitment that the game has been shipped and at this point I'm not even confident it even has been built. I do not care for people holding onto my money and not providing clear communication.

This is my first experience dealing with Cointaker and at this point it will most likely be my last.

I'm just curious if anyone else is getting any clear line of sight with this and if not, if they are being fed a complete line of bullshit like I am?

This is Cointaker, unfortunately.

You are among the dozens and dozens that have been run through this crap. Go see the TBL thread, it is exactly the same.

They basically string you along and keep stating “it’s coming, just another 2 weeks or you are on the next order”. Why take peoples money? The should wait to the ship/plane dock/land in the US. (My pure speculation is Cointaker is helping fund these companies in the background. So maybe in the case of DP or PB they are not a true, separate distributor. Kind of a conflict of interest- which gets messy).

If Cointaker does not know, please say we do not know but our best guess would be Xx.

Also get out a serial number and future build date list out and send to customers. That would help.

Your frustration is unfortunately very common with Cointaker. Seems like they “connect” up some people sooner than others.

Not to defend Cointaker but they are the biggest most trusted distributor for a reason. However in this case as you pointed out the difference is like DP (TBL). Melissa can only go by the long distance info they are provided. Sadly DP and BP tend to estimate what may happen and she just passes along what she heard last. I doubt anyone would be happy with "we don't know" as that would open another line of complaints. Hopefully PB will start to streamline the build and the shipping route will be a bit more predictable in 22.

Melissa is asking for the full payment when PB is asking. This comes with the assumption that it will be shipped soon after, however just getting a ship out of dock has been a question of 'when'...and that's before it even gets to the US.

I didn't like it either though when we'd get answers that basically seemed like they were guessing...but I have to assume these are things that PB is telling them.

Understand.

In both cases:
1. Why take full payment in advance if you (Cointaker) does not know? Bad business, especially as you state of DP/PB are not able to reliably deliver.
2. Order in line. This has been gone over several times. Let people know where they stand. What is the pint of being vague? People try to figure out regardless when they feel they are being taken advantage of.

These are why I am being nice call this “messy”. Several people would call it worse.