Yep, too good to be true. Don't bother

Scam

Ask them if they'll take $3,099.

Interesting site.
Was just registered Oct 1st 2017. In some places, the text is a little odd:

New items that are in stock can typically ship right way, while refurbished items may need to be cleaned and tested before they are ready to ship.

"Ship right way"? And it's interesting to note that refurbished machines are simply cleaned and tested.

Also -

Pinballkingdom, LLC was founded by David J. Walker and Frank D. Moody. Both are very active in the pinball community – Frank D. Moody started and runs Bay Area Amusements as well as owns a number of games, and David J. Walker is an avid collector as well as board member of the Las Vegas Pinball Hall Of Fame Museum. Both have high tech backgrounds and have worked at several Silicon Valley companies for many years.
Pinballkingdom, LLC headquartered in Columbus, OHIO and operate 3 different facilities.

I thought BAA was in Nevada, not Ohio?

And finally:

Pinballkingdom, LLC has acquired the right to produce (with WEG approval) new pinball machines under the Bally mark and logo. We will explore options to bring a limited number of new or re-issued games to the market.

Does PPS/CGC know about this?

The phone number listed on their site is a google voice number.

Aww man every other Stern distributor is stickin it to us! </s>

Photos stolen from another retailer:

https://pinballkingdom.com/shop/attack-from-mars/

https://www.thepinballcompany.com/product/attack-from-mars-high-end-restoration/

They prefer a direct bank transfer. Didn't see a credit card option

IMG_4318 (resized).PNG

Wow bank transfer lol , guess it’s hard to get back wired funds ... thanks a lot frank moody

Yes, appears to be a scam.

rick

anyone have what their facebook is?

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100022960928826

Or search Frank D. Moody, he comes up first.

LTG : )

See my update below ... stay tuned!

I'm guessing all of the photos are stolen from various sources, wouldn't take a lot of time to create a fake FB profile and website to catch suckers

The website is hosted by A2 Hosting.

https://www.a2hosting.com/

Screenshot_2017-11-29-21-48-09-1 (resized).png

The domain ownership info is hidden.

http://whois.domaintools.com/pinballkingdom.com

Not much useful info, but here is something that shows what the site is built with:

https://builtwith.com/Pinballkingdom.com

Nothing too exotic and all free.

The SSL certificate was created using a free SSL service, so no owner info there.

https://letsencrypt.org

unfortunately it will be which happens first - some naive person sends over their account info hoping to get a deal - or their FB and website get shut down ...

I guess a prospective buyer should always confirm with the manufacturer whether a company is actually an authorized dealer.

This way the buyer will never get screwed.

Not everyone knows enough to do that or how to verify that. To a novice, it looks and sounds like a fairly legitimate site.

Zero recourse for bank wired funds. Thank the great members of Pinside to shed some light on this POS.
Force flow great due diligence. There should be a way to have this site flagged and removed. These people make me sick. Everyone be careful out there. Imagine if they were less obvious and put Black Friday sale with only 500 off and free shipping. Perhaps it would have fooled more people. Gentlemen be safe.

Ok, so an update ...

So, someone claiming to be Frank Moody called me as he knows who I am and wanted to try to clear some things up about PinballKingdom, we talked for probably 15 mins, as I FB'ed him trying to figure out who/why he was associated with using our PPS content on this site.

He said that he contracted with a web company to create his site and is not an IT person and I guess he got some issues in terms of 'leveraged' stuff (like our faq as well as possibly pictures from other sites).

He asserted that his Facebook is real and he really is in columbus, Ohio - I don't know that for sure or not, but probably easy to check if anyone in Columbus is interested in meeting up with this guy.

I told him that if he was legitimate this was probably not the best start for a new 'company' and he agreed, I also said that there were many red flags in terms of the faq (which used PPS's content with names changed), the pictures, private domain registration, as well as the wire xfer only payment, etc.

Also per a previous post, I think it could be verified with Stern, etc as well as if this company is a valid reseller (or not) but this may shed some light on things as well.

SO, he suggested that he was interested to make the perception better, and I said I was interested in helping the pinball community do what I could to either expose that he is legit or expose that this is a fraudulent site - so he was fine with that ...

I did not expect this contact with anyone on this, and so I will see where this goes and report back. Let's see if he's real or not ... I told him I would reserve my opinion based on more info over the course of the next week or so.

A couple of interesting points - I talked to Exec at Stern and they believe this is not a legit site - especially with prices below MAP. Also apparently this type of thing has been done before with another web site, which had people you could talk to, etc. Additionally, Frank had what I would guess is a European accent, so nothing wrong with someone in the US, but another flag.

If the prevailing view that this is not a legit site then I am quite shocked at the extent at which people would go ...

rick

Keep in mind, there were several listings for restored games that used photos from another retailer. That's a huge red flag right there if you can't even take photos of the actual products you supposedly have for sale.

No listing on Stern's site for them in Ohio:
http://www.sternpinball.com/find-a-commercial-distributor/?zip=&city=&state=Ohio&country=United+States

I emailed the retailer that pinballkingdom stole the photos from, and they didn't seem surprised and indicated that it wasn't the first time it had happened.

Well, if you know what you're doing, someone could have a site like this up within a day or two. It doesn't take a whole lot of work to register a domain, get web hosting, set up wordpress, set up woocommerce, throw up some photos and text, and register a google voice number. So for about $20 and some free time, they are off to the races pretty quick.

Sadly someone shopping for a pinball at Christmas and not knowing any better might buy the lowest priced one only finding out after why it was so cheap... and obviously you won’t have your credit card to protect you.

People have to be very careful these days and protect themselves.

I just did an Intelius search on Frank D Moody ... no matches in Columbus, OH.

Rick

Looks dicey as hell. Hard pass.

There is the possibility that could have issued opt-out & information removal requests. But most people don't bother with that.

I gotta believe that's a pretty incomplete list. No http://www.tiltamusements.com/ listed on their list either and Trent is one of the biggest Stern distributors there is. I've also never heard of a .come web address??? so I don't think Stern is really up on their website maintenance.

UPDATE: Also no https://cointaker.com/ listing for PA.

“Shenanigans”

bogus site - Just saw prices on their games - so the strategy is to offer $1K-2K lower than lowest price possible (MAP) and hope somebody bites.

Rick

This site is still showing games for sale, I emailed for fun and they got back to me. Has anyone actually purchased anything from this Frank D Moody ?

I see that they are "the number one online pinball machines retailer". who knew...?

yes i read it, I was asking if anyone has actually dealt with this guy. I'm not implying I am going to send him money, but more interested in why he still lists stuff for sale.

Yep, and unfortunately there is a sucker born every minute.

I found Pinballkingdom.com on google and was checking them out,then I searched them on here and found this thread as the only thread on Pinside about them.Has anybody actually bought anything from them or have any experiences they can share,it’s just weird that this company if a scammer can continue to still operate it’s Website and have a number people can call.

It's not weird. It's not difficult to redirect a page and point a URL at a new server.

You want to lose your money? Be our guest, let us know how that goes. Meanwhile, anyone with half a sliver of common sense is not even going to try that's seen this thread. Apparently, it takes roughly 29 days to locate a sucker to scam.

Frank Moody will get moody if you call him out on his scam website. Hope he doesn’t get a dime.

Scam. Scam. Scam.

If you even have to question if something might be a scam, then it usually is.

It's quite easy to set up a website and a Google voice number. It takes less than a day to get up and running and is basically free to do.

The hard part is actually getting the website taken down (which is basically impossible), since it's under the scammer's control.

Ok,well hopefully by bumping up this thread more people can see it and be warned about this scammer site.

I wonder if Frank is mad about this thread...

Ask him what pinball shows he's displaying at. Tell him you'll pick up a machine there with cash.