Cold Shoulder

[James]

I was in Yarmouth again today and thought given the state of the CSI in there I would ask the question of if it was for sale. The owner came in 5 minutes after it had munched a 50p and not given me a game so I was waiting for them to sort that anyway. He tried a pound coin in the machine, no joy.. gave me the pound (so I made 50p)

Asked if he ever wanted to sell the game and honestly it looked like I had just taken a dump on the carpet in the arcade (I hadn’t) said no and walked off.

Cheers!

 

[chris b]

Operators have zero interest in selling to joe public

 

[James]

Oh

 

[carl lawrence]

Been there done that ,had the same response , but one op did say I would have to be VAT registered , but that was about 10 years ago though !

 

[johnwhitfield]

Assuming it was a U.K. op then what difference does it make to them if you were VAT registered? It would still be the same cash to them.

 

[James]

I get that, I get asked such questions in my role weekly, we manufacture a product and the amount of companies from one man bands upwards asking to do our warranty work, even when the answer is clearly no, I still take the time to explain why it is no, but that I cannot ensure that won't be the same in six months, but they are free to contact me then and should that be the same then, when they do and for many (all) when the answer will invariably be the same, I will still be polite and go through it again.

Still, each to their own hey.

 

[myPinballs]

For operators, its about the hassle factor. They dont like selling to joe public, as they see a situation of you phoning them up asking all sorts of silly questions as to why the game doesnt work , or blowing yourself up and blaming them. Yes, its an out of date thought process, but its fixed at 1985, so there you go!

If you ever went to an operator in the late 80s/early 90s and managed to get in there, it was a most enjoyable experience

 

[James]

Which all of it is fine...

Could have just said though hey

 

[steve brum]

I have only ever bought one pin off an arcade floor by asking the question. Asking for the owners details then calling later can unearth stuff in store rooms but it rarely works and unlikely now. An operator in bristol wouldnt sell me machines but sold me 10 backglasses for a fiver each so talking to arcade owners is probably fruitless but what do you have to loose?
Most ops too rich to care and don't want the hassle . Notice that very few arcade machines in the trade come up on ebay even fruit machines , which some ops do list to avoid paying to have them land filled but I can well imagine the time wasters they get. My local operator Newby automatics will not sell me machines as I'm not trade . 20 years and no joy. My friend saw an addams family by a skip in their yard once . Madness

 

[myPinballs]

I have only ever bought one pin off an arcade floor by asking the question. Asking for the owners details then calling later can unearth stuff in store rooms but it rarely works and unlikely now. An operator in bristol wouldnt sell me machines but sold me 10 backglasses for a fiver each so talking to arcade owners is probably fruitless but what do you have to loose?
Most ops too rich to care and don't want the hassle . Notice that very few arcade machines in the trade come up on ebay even fruit machines , which some ops do list to avoid paying to have them land filled but I can well imagine the time wasters they get. My local operator Newby automatics will not sell me machines as I'm not trade . 20 years and no joy. My friend saw an addams family by a skip in their yard once . Madness

My dad, rest his sole, was the kind of guy who could sweet talk anyone, and we got full access to various old operators storage areas in the late 80s/early 90s (around leeds). They were all hard as nails no **** sort of guys, but they seemed to warm to my old man Happy days

 

[PBrookfield]

I had one strange exception to that near-rule of never selling to the public. I was with my brother up in an arcade - I want to say Skegness but it's probably not that, my memory is failing me right now - and we spotted a Gauntlet Legends cabinet, and we've been fans of that game for years so we collectively shoved about 10 quid into it, played it hard and went to walk out of the arcade. Ended up being chased by the kid behind the change counter, who told us that we were the only people that played the machine in months and if we wanted to buy it for £200. Nearly broke his wrist off for that price, left him my phone number and got told that the owner would call me about it tomorrow. Obviously that price didn't stand when he finally did call me, but we did haggle out an extremely agreeable price all the same.

So not only did I buy a machine this one, single time from an arcade I'd walked into as just a punter, the operator was so eager to get rid of it that he had his staff chase me down just because I dared to play it!

 

[Mercifull]

In my (albeit very limited) experience with operators, they neither want to sell... NOR REPAIR broken machines. Like some sort of Schrödinger's pinball machine.

 

[PBrookfield]

In my (albeit very limited) experience with operators, they neither want to sell... NOR REPAIR broken machines. Like some sort of Schrödinger's pinball machine.

Everyone that I've known that has had to deal with many UK operators, especially seaside ones, usually only just stops short of declaring mental illness being involved, or at the very least a weird sort of paranoia and non-adaptability to the modern times. They all seem to be struggling with the concept that the people that want to buy nowadays are just as likely to be home users, not rival operators - and that the cycle of new machines is no longer short enough whereby you can just run machines into the ground from now, and when they need repairs, replacing with the latest and greatest instead.