Bradenton, FL
EDIT: Wow, thank you for all the fast responses. I am unable to reply on my new post due to the fact that I am not verified yet. This was what was written on the company website: "we take pride in our pinball restoration process, which is why all our refurbished pinball machines come with the most competitive warranty in the business. This machine has been fully refurbished in both playability and appearance."
Obviously, this is not what we received. My husband had asked for pictures, but they didn't provide them until right before delivery. When he asked where the machine came from the owner stated that he did not know. We do realize that the game is not worth what was paid in the current condition. What we are not sure of is whether this machine is salvageable and what the cost range would be to get it to where it should be if we tried to negotiate a significant discount and send it to be redone ourselves. (The mansion wasn't stickers, I appear to have stated this wrong, but the playfield has peeled up so that the sills are missing). Trying to add some photos below. Again, this was not the condition we expected, but being new, we wanted to ensure our gut was right.
Original Post:
My husband purchased a TAF machine for me for my birthday. It was delivered Friday afternoon. We have wanted one for years, but this is our first pinball game so excuse my lack of knowledge of technical terms. It was purchased from a game room company (can be found in malls, etc). They stated that they had the machine in the shop for 2 weeks working on it prior to delivery, site says that they do a full restoration. It arrived with a freshly painted cabinet, new playfield glass, and new flippers and bumper rubbers.
There are a number of things we noticed, get to that list in a second, but within 24 hours of delivery the lower right flipper started flipping at 1/2 speed. We opened it up and found that a wire had come free. We re-soldered the wire and were good to go within an hour. After another few hours of playing the center piece of the left triangle bumper where Morticia sits, got stuck in the out position. This created a hot smell and smoke in the cabinet. We immediately shut it off. We turned on again in a few minutes to see if it was just hot or needed to reset, and it was still stuck so we shut it off immediately. Prior to this, we felt that the triangle bumpers were loose, and less reactive than we expected. We had called the owner when the flipper started acting up, and he said he would send someone out Tuesday morning (birthday party is Tuesday night) and that he would make it right, and doubled down on the fact that it had been in the shop and worked on for 2 weeks.
We tend to feel that they painted the cabinet, replaced a few bulbs, and flipper rubbers, and called it good. We are obviously incredibly disappointed. We have been doing a ton of research, reading, and watching YouTube tutorials, and the more that we read the more disappointed we are. Understanding that this is a 30 year old game, we had a different expectation of what the condition of the machine should have been, given a full restoration.
These are the items that we have noticed, aside from the 2 listed above:
- Thing flips does not engage/work
- Flicker lights in top cabinet were removed and replaced with solid LEDs (1 is out)
- Left speaker does not work
- Ball constantly catches on swamp to left, requiring tilt to release - also catches behind bookcase, but the machine releases this fine
- Volume will not go below 8
- Plunger box is cracked and overlaps at left side
- Mansion stickers are peeled and torn, along with a small raised fissure just above left flipper
- Ball falls off of bear kicks ramp just before hitting round cage at right approximately 20-25% of the time
- Thing hits ball on lower half of box when pulling in, and is really filthy
- 2 Tower lights not working at all
- Wear in wood at tunnel entrances
- Upper cabinet interior very dusty, lower cabinet appears to have no new soldering or items
- Top of playfield measures 1.4 degrees higher at top of playfield than bottom (not sure if this is normal, based on leveling of another machine it didn't appear to be)
At this point, we are unsure how to proceed. We are not sure if we should keep this cabinet, let him fix the issues, and restore to our specs, ask for a discount, so we can have this done ourselves, or return the unit and look elsewhere for a machine that has been restored properly. The machine was around $12K (not sure of actual as it was a gift but I know that is in the ballpark). We liked the fact, being newbies, that the machine was under warrantee and guaranteed for a year, as we do not have a lot of experience, but not sure if we have confidence at this point. I appreciate your advice, input, as I have monitored this site for awhile and used it to look for games in the wild to play.
Happy to upload any pictures, I honestly wasn't sure what would or wouldn't be helpful.
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Kelowna, BC
