Good enough for me. Thanks for the confirmation JJ.

It was a blast to their dealer and Distributor list due to concerns posted by customers and Dealers ect...

JJ

Thx! That's the info I wanted.

Well you can;t blame them for trying to slip it passed everyone. Good catch by the peeps around here that got it sort of back-tracked.

"This language does not impact our warranty coverage"

This doesn't say much - the existing warranty doesn't say anything about ghosting or what is considered a playfield defect.

Exactly...its like saying..heylookat this shinnything right there.... Dont look over here but here.

Well i guess it willbe good for competition.

can't be uneven inserts. The way playfields are made, is the inserts are CAD out. then inserts are inserted. Then the whole playfield is sent through a plainer to level everything out.

Also, putting it on a light table to check for ghosting won't do shit, as you can't really see the ghosting when the inserts are lit. Only when off.

stern cheerleader:
ghosting is normal, not a big deal, looks retro, love the marbling!

same cheerleader buying a ghosted pin:
i want 800 off price due to ghosting

nuff said!!!

I'm afraid to ask how many upset customers called you today to voice their displeasure with Stern's CYA in the Star Wars manual.

Stern sends message to distributors but would not dare to display that message publicly because they know there statement doesnt hold water.

Just to clarify, that was the first original Playfield shooter lane pic that was warrantied. The replacement is holding up well thus far.

Hey Stern, Go Suck A Rotten Egg!

You think Stern knows EXACTLY what's being bitched about here on Pinside?

All the dissatisfaction and cancelled orders being thrown around here have to be disconcerting to them. If it's not, they're idiots.

As a dealer we take pride in standing behind what we sell. We warranty restored pinballs for six months and new for a full year. Up until now Stern was very cooperative when there was quality control issues. To be honest I had a feeling there might be a change on the wind late last winter. As a dealer we are just informed of this change. We were also assured that nothing would change as far as Stern standing behind their product. As a gentleman I have to take them at their word until they prove me wrong. As a businessman we have had meetings for the last two days. We(the people here at Pinball Alley) have decided that we will purchase extra playfields for each release. This does not help with the LE's. Hopefully nothing will change. It has been our policy to unbox new pinballs (for the last three years) unless requested otherwise. We have found that a high number of new pinballs (ALL MANUFACTURERS!!!) need some kind of adjusting before they are fit to be sold. We have taken the attitude that most people would prefer to test "drive" the pinball they plan to purchase. As time goes on we are getting fewer request for NIB. It is so much easier for us to stand behind our product before it is sold. I have to admit that the added verbiage is unsettling. I feel like it places extra burden on dealers. I guess time will tell.

-J

Can you clarify exactly what Stern informed you of?

I'm interested to know what they have communicated to distributors...

That is good news. We got our replacement as well. Ours is holding up well. We have fitted Cliffys and playfield protector too. My wife loves her GBLE.

The notice was headed as "New Language on the front of the service and operations manual." That as the pinball market continues to expand globally that they needed to add language to the front cover of service and operations manuals. "The language is intended to inform new participants in pinball about common occurrences associated with the game including dimpling, crazing, and ghosting." Stern goes on to further assure that "The language does not impact our warranty coverage." We stand behind our products and services. I must state that in my years of dealing with Stern , they have been great when it comes to making things right. I have had only one issue that was contentious. In the end Stern saw that I felt strongly about the issue and gave in. Because of this I must give the guys at Stern the benefit of the doubt. I have no unhappy Stern customers to date. I must admit that the notice left a queasy feeling in my stomach. Perhaps there is a "Legalese" issue with overseas rules and regulations that made the legal department deem this necessary. Right now there is too little to speculate. The real point of my post was that it is always best to err on the side of caution. In this case, look at what you are going to buy before you pay for it.

-J

When we bought TAFs with magnet burn we got a discount vs other TAF on sale at the time. But it competed against cab and WPC cpu problems also. Those shouldn't exist on NIB games (or is the SPIKE Sterns ASIC?)

On CV, the discount for ghosting appeared to be $0 after 2005 or so since they were starting to settle into collectors basements.

As someone who has never bought a NIB game before it was out 2 years, but is looking at the LE and first SPIKE, it gives me a challenge when I see the company I am buying from backing away from helping me if I get a lemon. You don't mind loosing if you open a box and the popularity of a title goes south, but because you got unlucky in the quality lottery it seems wrong.

Wonder what my distributor thinks?

Passing a rotten batch of PFs to customers shelling out an all time high price for NIB Pro's as 'normal inconsistencies in a (upcoming buzz word warning) American made product' when no other dealer is showing this flaw is as cowardly and snide as it gets.

Why put that new section in the manual in the first place when they say now nothing will change ? I know of a number of people that were refused a new playfield and I am waiting myself for approval for 8 months now. By putting in that new section they can very easily turn down requests without even investigating into the problem. Very convenient.

When they are serious about standing behind their product then just take out the new section. It has not been there for 20+ years so should not be necessary now if they are serious about that letter, also taking into account that their profit per machine must be higher than ever. Production cost has not increased as much as the price of these machines the last couple of years.

Only time will tell but my experience has tought me that support and quality only get worse. I think they only put out this statement because they are feeling the consequenses already.

Really, they say all pros are bought by operators. I buy pros and I'm not an operator, but that's what they say.

It's done anyway as they tried and failed to get this passed.

This is a really good idea. It ends the drop shipping, of course, but certainly takes the risk away (or at least substantially reduces it) from the buyer.

It doesn't change the warranty because there is no warranty. So that statement is technically correct. I like how they state their commitment in researching how to make entertaining games, nothing about product quality. Lip service. Boo.

No worries, they'll send some mylar to you to stop the clear/paint/wood chipping until the metal scoop Cliffy shows up ... oh, you're talking about Stern? Carry on then.

My entire quash is with the wording used

"The language is intended to inform new participants in pinball about common occurrences associated with the game including dimpling, crazing, and ghosting."

Common occurences.....ghosting / crazing are not common in new games

Inform new participants...so does that mean that old participants get ghosting covered? Feels like they are preying on the new innocnet consumer.

Its just regurgitated crap to xover their ass for their short coming.

And you can really tell people are pissed off. My facebook post is about to pass 4100 views. I know not much but at least its viewed by people outside of pinside.

My $1100 CPR play field for Whirlwind had crazing.

Plays better than the old play field that was in it!

Would you say its common? And if so since when as it become common and why? Im not talking about old beat up games..im talking about fresh off the line ones.

Your cpr playfield would fall under uncommon, rare, ultra common?

Is it just a pill I refuse to swallow? Ive never had crazing on any of my new games

CPR has a whole write up about their playfields on the website.

You still havent answered my question

From their Gold class play field description ... "Is every playfield absolutely 100.000% perfect?? No. No playfield ever is."

Read the whole thing here, especially this part - COMMONLY QUESTIONED ATTRIBUTES BY FIRST-TIME BUYERS.

http://www.classicplayfields.com/standards.html

What is your Facebook page? If you would care to share

Do yourself a favour and read http://www.classicplayfields.com/standards.html

It may help calm you down.

I know lots of guys that buy Pros, even guys that can afford to buy whatever they want and they still buy Pros. Even a 5 or 6K Pro is a boatload of money to a lot of people, and if I get a bad playfield I would be furious if they didn't stand behind it. Also if the ever came out and said that they won't warranty the Pro models then that's when they would lose me as a customer for life.

If "ghosting" is such a big deal...DON'T BUY THE PRODUCT!

I bet you can't resist...you need that new Stern pin. See?....they got you by the balls. You're a fish on the hook.

I think a lot of people might put up with minor ghosting and keep buying, but if all playfields ghosted like the GB playfields did then Stern would be out of business so fast it would make your head spin. People are proud of their games and they want them to look nice in their home. That may seem dumb to a lot of people but that is a huge part of Sterns market so they need to make it happen, and they CAN make it happen because they've put out a lot of great quality playfields in the past.

The voice of reason. Thanks for jumping into the fire and giving us some much needed info and answers.

Pinside (especially fuel seekers), love to bring out the pitchforks at a moments notice. And there is a higher standard to quality as newer, more wealthier, investment collectors join the hobby.

That all said; it is no secret that 'something' has changed with the way stern is manufacturing their playfields. It's a revolving door of issues when it comes to pinball; fix one issue, another arises, and so forth. If stern still does replacement programs and supports customers as they have in the past, which I suspect they will, then they should have no problem continuing to sell pins. But, the experience and all that had occurred in 2016 + this new policy + continued price increases has put a sour taste in a lot of our mouths making it a tougher pill to swallow moving forward with nib purchases (from all manufacturers). I hope they, all of them, continue to support the snot out of these newer higher priced pins as they have in the past but there are gray lines in policies and warranties.

Only time will tell what the future of our hobby holds, but hopefully people who are so easy to burn these manufacturers with no intent to buy or support, take a few steps back from the hobby and let the ones who do buy + support products do what their desire wills.

Years ago when i was looking to buy a CV or Totan, before i hated Jpop, all i heard about was "check for insert ghosting" and sunken inserts.

I really could care less myself about minor ghosting. But every buyer of a pinball machine is going to use it against you when you go to sell.

It's the chipping that is MUCH more troublesome and goes to the overall quality of the CC job.

I'll probably buy another GBLE pf just in case. Once again, my AS and BM66 pfs are awesome.

Stern will get it worked out.

You knocked it out the park!!!

WOW are you living in the wrong place. In the MPLS/SP and surrounding suburbs we must have 100 games on route and I'd probably say another 100-300 in homes. If I'm to high someone please correct me.

I guess, but I would hate that to be true. Other manufacturers have so many orders they are refraining from announcing new pins....

I don't know Mike, I kind of disagree with his comment. There are a lot of newcomers and younger people that are playing pinball now and loving it. Pinball is becoming cool again and I still think that it can get way bigger than it is now even. I do not think pinball is at its pinnacle at all yet.

Its not, i like the smaller niche pinball has carved into smaller (and bigger) locations. But the big players have not even adopted pinball again yet. Dave and Busters, for example...which i LIKE the fact D and B arent operating pins...keep Pinball locations unique

If you think Dealing with Stern is weird...wait till you get a load of CPR

lmao, so stern ghosting is normal now?.... no it's not!
it's air between the insert and the clear, why, because the clear as nothing to bit on.
who ever's making the clear job can't find a solution.

same goes for chipping around the outhole and others, not normal.
at $5k+ usd for a pro and a fucked up the ass price for the other versions for a lot less, why is it that we have shop around to buy cliffys or anything similar to fix YOUR problems? at these prices why not install the damn thing, boom problem solved! what is it? a $2 cost piece of metal... seriously.

now i'm on the fence buying a SW, even if it looks empty like never before. a dream theme, an amazing opportunity... ruined, nice job stern. man that Houdini is looking pretty damn good now....

Vid and other playfield experts are (wisely) steering clear of this thread. But I'd love to know what they think.

Me too!

I already told you the facts.

So stern informs dealers about this new "language" that "doesn't impact our warranty coverage ". Do dealers inform the customers about it when they preorder their game? And why taking the pain to write it in the manual if it does not impact the warranty? It will be seen in facts if it doesn't impact Anything.
Wood playfield is too soft, clearcoat too thin. That is all. Never seen these issues when I had my Lord of the ring. Have you heard about the words dimpling and ghosting at that time?
As there are more pinball manufacturers and so more games per year I don't know if there are more playfield manufacturers that could complete all the production...or building quicker but less quality.

They have no idea why it seems to be coming batch after batch these days... in the past Churchill screwed up Cv and this bled over slightly to NGG (same time frame - I bought them both NIB on closeout) but no other game I own has ghosting.
You'll find some examples over the past 30 years but nothing quite as routine as now from Stern.

Could be anything...poor prep causing adhesion issues to the inserts, it's obviously too hard and thick causing chipping, etc... there's a whole myriad of potential causes.

So something's changed in the formula or construction - and I doubt we'll ever know the "one" thing that's the cause.

Heck the "experts" over here can't even seem to confirm if all CC has to be waterbased by law or what formulations are currently on the market. So we're in the dark here.