I've chatted with many other collectors about this over the years and I am beginning to think there is a very vocal minority complaining about Stern quality. I've bought 15 NIB Stern games over the last 10 years and every single one has been cosmetically flawless right out of the box. A couple required some minor adjustments; arguably something that could have been caught in the factory but nothing major. In fact the only thing I've had to do to any of them was get a free factory board replaced by Stern on my GOTLE when it would fail to update.
If "cutting" costs is what it taked to keep them in business and be able to sell Pro level games for thousands less than any other competition then it's not a deal breaker for me. In fact, I'd argue that a lot of the cost cutting have actually been improvements over all - - lockdown bar latches more tightly and securely and keeps spills out much better, the metal back box head makes the game lighter which I prefer when moving them and I actually think lools better, they've brought back the service rails and even listened to us and put handles on the vertical board on the back of the playfield on recent games, moving the power switch to the head has had kept little kids from turning the machine off mid-game, etc.
I'm sure everyone has had their own experiences with quality and problems but I dont think the sky is falling and raising prices is unfortunately just part of inflation.