(Topic ID: 183627)

Stern Playfield Replacement Program - How was your experience?

By jar155

7 years ago


Topic Heartbeat

Topic Stats

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Linked Games

Topic poll

“What's the status of your playfield replacement?”

  • Received a playfield replacement first and then sent my old one back 7 votes
    14%
  • Received an empty shipping box, sent my playfield back, received new playfield 23 votes
    46%
  • Received an empty shipping box, sent my playfield back, waiting on new playfield 5 votes
    10%
  • Was not accepted for playfield replacement at this time 15 votes
    30%

(50 votes)

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#65 6 years ago

I noticed ghosting on my playfield a week after I bought it from my Distributor in early Oct 2017. It was a floor model but only had 300 plays on it so it was practically a new in box. The playfield had a date of Sep 2016 so it was part of the bad batch of playfields. Supposedly anything before Oct 20th 2016 was bad. I contacted my distributor who got me into contact with Pat over at Stern. They agreed that it was covered on the replacement warranty and sent me an empty box. We took out the old playfield and sent it to Stern. The whole process was quick. Roughly 2 weeks. Couple of things to mention. My playfield had a ton of mods on it and my distributor told me to leave them in for he believed Stern would take them out and send back. I did not want to trust that so my wife and I took them all out. We were not able to take out the green captive balls in the left captive ball area so I left those in and emailed Pat at Stern twice that I was not able to get those and if they could please send those back to me. I just received the playfield today and they did not replace the green balls. I will contact Pat to see if I can get those back. When I looked at the date of the new playfield it was not "new". It had a date of December 2016. A year old. It is new in that it was never played on but it seems that Stern has a bunch of these laying around from a year ago. Because it was produced after Oct 2016 my hope is that the issues were fixed. I did notice a small bubble on the left side of the storage facility insert. Not sure if this will become ghosting but it does concern me a bit. We shall see. One last thing...we had purchased a premium table. Stern sent us an LE for it is signed by John Trudeau. Not sure if this was a mistake on Sterns part or they had so many of these signed ones laying around that they wanted to get rid of and thought it would be an extra bonus since this was a hassle. Not sure how I think about this since the recent John Trudeau fiasco though.....

#68 6 years ago
Quoted from PeterG:

I can not understand why they will still send out John T. signed playfields, I thought they departed from that guy. But again a sign that there is money involved. Stern should scrap those......

I don't understand either. Again I believe its an overstock issue and someone went to the back room and grabbed it without noticing. My thought is that they have had such a headache with this playfield deal that they don't want to spend anymore wasted time looking over quality control. I don't know if I should complain about this or just let it be and move on. Like dnapac stated above, I should be happy it got replaced in the first place but still. It's not that noticeable and I guess it makes a good conversation piece even though that conversation is not a good one. One thing I did notice is that some of my shots are not registering. This thing is fast! When we first got it, it had roughly 300 plays on it so it played like a normal used machine. With this new playfield feeling like butter do you think the 1/10 shots not registering is due to the fact that the ball is going so fast that the board is unable to register it? I shot the left ramp and no joke that ball went from the right flipper up the ramp and back to the right flipper in a quarter of a second. I chuckled at it cause it was just crazy how fast it was. Should I give it a couple 100 plays and dirty it up a little before I get too concerned?

#70 6 years ago
Quoted from PeterG:

That left ramp switch at the top is known for not registering. I had to bend the metal to get a correct hit. But be careful with that.

Yeah. We were able to get it bent a little last night so that it was registering.

6 months later
#77 5 years ago
Quoted from HookedonPinonics:

I noticed ghosting on my playfield a week after I bought it from my Distributor in early Oct 2017. It was a floor model but only had 300 plays on it so it was practically a new in box. The playfield had a date of Sep 2016 so it was part of the bad batch of playfields. Supposedly anything before Oct 20th 2016 was bad. I contacted my distributor who got me into contact with Pat over at Stern. They agreed that it was covered on the replacement warranty and sent me an empty box. We took out the old playfield and sent it to Stern. The whole process was quick. Roughly 2 weeks. Couple of things to mention. My playfield had a ton of mods on it and my distributor told me to leave them in for he believed Stern would take them out and send back. I did not want to trust that so my wife and I took them all out. We were not able to take out the green captive balls in the left captive ball area so I left those in and emailed Pat at Stern twice that I was not able to get those and if they could please send those back to me. I just received the playfield today and they did not replace the green balls. I will contact Pat to see if I can get those back. When I looked at the date of the new playfield it was not "new". It had a date of December 2016. A year old. It is new in that it was never played on but it seems that Stern has a bunch of these laying around from a year ago. Because it was produced after Oct 2016 my hope is that the issues were fixed. I did notice a small bubble on the left side of the storage facility insert. Not sure if this will become ghosting but it does concern me a bit. We shall see. One last thing...we had purchased a premium table. Stern sent us an LE for it is signed by John Trudeau. Not sure if this was a mistake on Sterns part or they had so many of these signed ones laying around that they wanted to get rid of and thought it would be an extra bonus since this was a hassle. Not sure how I think about this since the recent John Trudeau fiasco though.....

Well 6 months have passed and I have ghosting again.......Not sure what to do. They are small compared to my old playfield ghosting. I am at the point of saying screw it and moving on.

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