Resurrecting this thread. I'm looking to purchase a pin from PinballUniverse and got from Denis via email that they're pretty busy but their phone number wasn't working which threw me off a bit.

Anyone recently purchase a pin from PinballUniverse and have some feedback about their experience they'd like to share? The reviews from several years ago were "mixed" at best so was looking for an update.

Oh, found this: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/rec.games.pinball/1OjU_5Lt5v8

The "easychristine" fiasco...

I’m not sure if anyone cares at this point but I bought a Congo from Pinball Universe a month ago and overall I’m fairly satisfied with my purchase.

Denis sent me pics of the cleanup process and kept me informed of the status of the pin while he was prepping it. He also said he would not upgrade the pin to LEDs which was a little disappointing but I could do that myself.

When I got to his warehouse (which is a small prefab in the back of a residential neighborhood) the pin was sitting on a hand truck with the legs off. He set it down and turned it on so I could play it but it obviously wasn’t level which made it difficult to test. I was a bit nervous but the playfield was in pretty good condition, at least consistent with what I saw in the pics he sent and took the glass off and used my hand to throw the ball into each switch successfully.

Denis helped me load the pin and I was off.

Since then, I’ve found the following problems:

- the kickback was only working 10% of the time.
- 3 lights don’t consistently work even after replacement.
- there were some loose connections in the head causing several electrical issues.
- the playfield was covered in dust, everywhere.

The kickback is something other people have complained about on Congo. I bent the metal rod and that seems to have fixed it.

The lights were surprising, but I’ll order replacement twisty connectors.

The loose connections probably happened in transit.

The dust seemed weird, he sent me pics of the pin with all the parts off the playfield as he checked lights and cleaned it. Then when I got it, I had to take everything off the playfield and clean it again quite thoroughly.

Overall, I payed a little more than market value for a pin I love and am fairly happy with the purchase. It came from Denis all original. I needed to install LEDs, colorDMD, and updated software.

I will probably buy from Pinball Universe again but try and get Denis to perform the LED upgrade and if he really cleaned the pin, I’ll suggest storing it with the glass on.