No one will burn you at the stake.

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Think of Jim having the hardest job in the entire world.

Pins were made to last 3 years, then they were supposed to go directly to the dump.

Pins we have in our basements are often 30-40 years old, and have been worked on by at least 50 different hacks over those years.

Each of those 50 hacks have made repairs that are very much not factory correct.

Then the hobbyist owners are usually worse than the hacks. They have none of the electronic training or mentoring that the hacks did.

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So you have Jim who has to supply a complicated computer product to hobbyist who don't have any formal repair training or mentoring.

Obviously if the hobbyists knew how to repair 70s era computers, they would just fix the boards rather than buy new Rottendog ones.

I can't tell you how many pins I have gone to fix, that are filled with dead boards in the bottom of the cabinet. The hobbyists just plop a new board in, without fixing the actual problem.

Could you get a brand new Rottendog board with a problem? Sure, there is always that chance, just like you could get a bad NOS Williams or Stern board.

But remember, there is no way for Jim to magically see your game from 1000 miles away. There is no way for him to know what 50 different people have done to it over the years.

All he can do is supply you with a brand new board that hopefully won't get damaged by your game (and hopefully arrives to you itself undamaged).