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Do we need another title when there are backlogs?

Juggler Spencer

Juggler Spencer

Registered
Joined
Aug 24, 2021
Messages
218
Location
UK
Just read this on a US forum:
Hey Stern, I have a great idea…
Instead of “RUSHing” out new irrelevant titles with practically the same layouts, no innovations and cheap plastics at an insane price, why don’t you guys concentrate on delivering the titles that you already sold and got paid for but can’t seem to produce and ship at a pace that won’t cause frustration and that won’t look and feel like you took everybody for granted?
I hope you guys lose ground faster to the other pinball companies so you can get back to your roots and start making quality pinballs!!!
Basic logic and customer service 101!
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I also read that Stern have 18,000 backlogged orders. Now I don't know whether this is a 100% accurate figure, but I DO know they have a big backlog of orders with long lead times for reruns. So it looks like supply is not just a UK issue.
Has he got a point?

Discuss.
 
Juggler Spencer said:
Just read this on a US forum:

I also read that Stern have 18,000 backlogged orders. Now I don't know whether this is a 100% accurate figure, but I DO know they have a big backlog of orders with long lead times for reruns. So it looks like supply is not just a UK issue.
Has he got a point?

Discuss.
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Maybe, just maybe they are going the Rolex route where deliberate scarcity creates a commodity.
 
Yeah it's very anti-consumer and I agree with the quote, I hope it catches up with them and people start refunding their deposits and not giving them more money. Those 18,000 backlog orders are being used by Stern as loans to bankroll their expansion and its ****ty.

Designers might leave if their being held back... Maybe? They might also appreciate some time to slow down, work on and really nail their next game. Or they do leave and sucks to be Stern - if it isn't the consequences of their own actions 😂
 
Gonzo said:
Is that correct? I hadn't heard that before
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As in: companies will try and hold onto your money as long as possible to get as much interest as possible and sit on the cash.

Like how companies prefer to pay you a monthly salary rather than weekly as they get a few extra weeks of interest.

Or recently how easyJet and similar made it a pain to get refunds when covid hit, preferring to string you along so they didn't lose the cash. People were effectively forced to lend airlines money to stay afloat.
 
OTRawrior said:
As in: companies will try and hold onto your money as long as possible to get as much interest as possible and sit on the cash.

Like how companies prefer to pay you a monthly salary rather than weekly as they get a few extra weeks of interest.

Or recently how easyJet and similar made it a pain to get refunds when covid hit, preferring to string you along so they didn't lose the cash. People were effectively forced to lend airlines money to stay afloat.
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Not much interest being paid at the moment, you make some very valid points though,
 
LOL 18000 orders backlogged. eh no.

Licensing deals are very specific about launch windows and the length of the use of the license.

If anyone has paid for something then they need to have a word with the distributers because Stern won't take money for a game they don't have plans to build within the next 30 days. The only things they take upfront money for is LEs and that's to combat some of the cashless flippers.
 
OTRawrior said:
As in: companies will try and hold onto your money as long as possible to get as much interest as possible and sit on the cash.

Like how companies prefer to pay you a monthly salary rather than weekly as they get a few extra weeks of interest.

Or recently how easyJet and similar made it a pain to get refunds when covid hit, preferring to string you along so they didn't lose the cash. People were effectively forced to lend airlines money to stay afloat.
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interest? LOL are you freaking joking?
 
OTRawrior said:
As in: companies will try and hold onto your money as long as possible to get as much interest as possible and sit on the cash.

Like how companies prefer to pay you a monthly salary rather than weekly as they get a few extra weeks of interest.

Or recently how easyJet and similar made it a pain to get refunds when covid hit, preferring to string you along so they didn't lose the cash. People were effectively forced to lend airlines money to stay afloat.
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Actually we had something similar with West Ham season ticket refunds which the club were reluctant to reimburse.
 
Neil McRae said:
interest? LOL are you freaking joking?
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🤔 For the employee payment example definitely.

Alright I take the point interest rates are low now so not strictly on topic 😉

Gonzo said:
Actually we had something similar with West Ham season ticket refunds which the club were reluctant to reimburse.
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You see the same when a country collectively panics and everyone tries to cash out their bank accounts - suddenly the normal behaviour of withdrawing money (or refunding a season ticket) is an existential issue for the banks/football club and they pucker up to keep the cash. Even if you have the right to the money, if they drag it out long enough they might weather the storm.


I'm really ranting now but you see it in my industry (car manufacturers) when a big OEM or Tier 1 is about to go bust - all of a sudden they start taking many more months to pay their suppliers...
 
OTRawrior said:
🤔 For the employee payment example definitely.

Alright I take the point interest rates are low now so not strictly on topic 😉



You see the same when a country collectively panics and everyone tries to cash out their bank accounts - suddenly the normal behaviour of withdrawing money (or refunding a season ticket) is an existential issue for the banks/football club and they pucker up to keep the cash. Even if you have the right to the money, if they drag it out long enough they might weather the storm.


I'm really ranting now but you see it in my industry (car manufacturers) when a big OEM or Tier 1 is about to go bust - all of a sudden they start taking many more months to pay their suppliers...
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90 day payment terms are becoming normal in the industry. Madness to think you can finish a job or supply parts and not get paid for three months !
 
Yet people rush- no pun intended out to order them time and time again knowing there’s little chance of seeing a pin soon . I have my eye on a nib but I won’t buy it till it’s in the uk I.e built ready to collect
 
Scorn said:
90 day payment terms are becoming normal in the industry. Madness to think you can finish a job or supply parts and not get paid for three months
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Hmm this sounds amusing - what is the ”industry?”

because just about every organisation that does any business with any part of government has to meet 60 day terms with all of their suppliers -

www.gov.uk

Prompt payment policy

Information on measures introduced by the government to tackle late and unfair payment practices in both public and private sectors.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk

Neil
 
Scorn said:
90 day payment terms are becoming normal in the industry. Madness to think you can finish a job or supply parts and not get paid for three months !
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"Just in time" supplier chain... which was coined i think by Honda..... Why sit on a bunch of parts for years when they can be produced to order.... until something like we have now which breaks it... and now we are seeing the consequences...
i.e. if we order the bits now, they can be delivered next week, and we have 2 or 3 months turnaround to get the cash back to you..
 
windoesnot said:
Didn’t Todd recently say on the Gonza podcast theres a 20,000 back order with Stern?
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Not sure how Todd would know that - they put games on the line until they exhaust parts supply and they then move onto the next game they have parts for.

They then make distros aware what’s going to be available and how many games of each model will be available then the distros order and cross their fingers or the big distros, notably on new launches, the distros get told how many games they have to buy. this is why 20 rush LEs are coming to the UK with barely any demand for them.
 
OTRawrior said:
🤔 For the employee payment example definitely.

Alright I take the point interest rates are low now so not strictly on topic 😉
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You need to learn how cash flow and working capital actually work in the big bad world. The reason airlines took so long to pay the money back is partly incompetence and mostly they didn’t have cash easily available to pay it back. i don’t think there are many businesses who can suddenly stop for 6 months and refund customers for years worth of orders(flights) without a cash flow problem.

OTRawrior said:
You see the same when a country collectively panics and everyone tries to cash out their bank accounts - suddenly the normal behaviour of withdrawing money (or refunding a season ticket) is an existential issue for the banks/football club and they pucker up to keep the cash. Even if you have the right to the money, if they drag it out long enough they might weather the storm.


I'm really ranting now but you see it in my industry (car manufacturers) when a big OEM or Tier 1 is about to go bust - all of a sudden they start taking many more months to pay their suppliers...
Click to expand...

how many countries has this happened in recently?

How many tier one car manufacturers have gone bust in the last 5 years?
 
The seeker said:
Yet people rush- no pun intended out to order them time and time again knowing there’s little chance of seeing a pin soon . I have my eye on a nib but I won’t buy it till it’s in the uk I.e built ready to collect
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The seeker are you actually a real person ? Or some sort of ADA programmed energy sponge? If you want something always better to be early in the queue so folks order early and place a deposit down and Phil is pretty clear about the timeline and expectations of when a game will arrive. It reminds me of pretty much every other high value business on the planet -

oh neil you want a Omega snoopy watch - its a grand deposit and we expect you’ll wait 6-9 months. You also want the Bond OHMSS limited edition - we’ll pay the whole lot up front and if you get lucky you will get it sometime in the next 12 months or we will refund you.

Oh Nell you want a new M4 it’s a 5 grand deposit and we expect you to wait 12 months.

Oh neil you want heat pump for your house, you have to pay up half up front and you’ll get it in 7 months. oh a new sofa 20% deposit and four months wait.


honestly - start living in the real world.

with pinball the current situation isn’t that different to how it’s always been. You always had to wait until Stern was making a game I waited almost 8 months for my TWD.

you want a game put a deposit down, the UK market isn’t big enough to have loads of games in a warehouse.
 
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Neil McRae said:
You need to learn how cash flow and working capital actually work in the big bad world. The reason airlines took so long to pay the money back is partly incompetence and mostly they didn’t have cash easily available to pay it back. i don’t think there are many businesses who can suddenly stop for 6 months and refund customers for years worth of orders(flights) without a cash flow problem.
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Yeah we're saying the same thing is happening. Of course if easyJet et al refunded everyone they would have gone bust and everyone would have lost their job. I just used that as as example of why a business might want to refuse refunds or hold onto orders they can't fulfill there and then. Ultimately its an outcome of markets and business pressures - probably not even exclusive to capitalist markets.

The point still stands that its sometimes good for a business to hold onto your money. This is obviously bad for the customer who is currently without money and without product/service.
Neil McRae said:
how many countries has this happened in recently?

How many tier one car manufacturers have gone bust in the last 5 years?
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Again don't get the relevance of why this would need to have happened in the past 5 years to be an example of why a business might hold onto supply chain money. Not happening much at the moment sure. Last recession it did. Next recession it might. Still works as an example.


None of this to say Stern is about to go bust - but does help illustrate why they aren't stopping all future design work until they get every single game that's been ordered out of the factory door.

None of this to say it isn't how it works in the real world. But sometimes we can say "the real world systems can be bad for consumers sometimes".
 
OTRawrior said:
Yeah we're saying the same thing is happening. Of course if easyJet et al refunded everyone they would have gone bust and everyone would have lost their job. I just used that as as example of why a business might want to refuse refunds or hold onto orders they can't fulfill there and then. Ultimately its an outcome of markets and business pressures - probably not even exclusive to capitalist markets.
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No we aren't and No they wouldn't. They didn't have the cash to refund anyone. They just needed to get that cash together and I suspect took out debt to do it. You are apply a broad brush to many businesses based on headline bull**** of a few.

OTRawrior said:
The point still stands that its sometimes good for a business to hold onto your money. This is obviously bad for the customer who is currently without money and without product/service.
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In looking at all of this, the best option is for companies to pay as soon as possible, I don't know of many, any, high value businesses that make you pay out in full unless you are buying something very rare where there is huge demand or having something custom made.
OTRawrior said:
Again don't get the relevance of why this would need to have happened in the past 5 years to be an example of why a business might hold onto supply chain money. Not happening much at the moment sure. Last recession it did. Next recession it might. Still works as an example.
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The relevance is that you made up one load of old bull**** that makes it sound like everyday countries and car manufacturers are going bust, and then use that to justify someone elses bull**** claim about people having shelled out and waiting on a game when Stern don't take any money for any games, distros take deposits to stop time wasting. Why is there no discussion about all the folks kicking tyres on games they have no intention of buying?

OTRawrior said:
None of this to say Stern is about to go bust - but does help illustrate why they aren't stopping all future design work until they get every single game that's been ordered out of the factory door.

None of this to say it isn't how it works in the real world. But sometimes we can say "the real world systems can be bad for consumers sometimes".
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No it doesn't help illustrate anything other than how bad forums can be at making up BS. Stern moved factories a few years ago and planned for it, during a large part of that year they did nothing but make ghostbusters and they didn't launch anything and agreed this with the titles they planned to launch. Godzilla and Rush contracts and plans were signed more than two years ago, James Bond I know for a fact was signed even longer and they have limited time to get the games approved and limited time windows to launch them and then limited times to make the games.

This thread should be changed in title to the lets make any old BS up to fill the space on Paul's servers hard disk. Car manufactures going bust? payment terms? Next it will be the ****ing zombie apocalypse is coming and that's Stern's fault too.

Regards,
Neil.
 
Alright Neil, for what it's worth I think your being uncharitable to my position on this and we aren't as at-odds as you seem to think we are. But we aren't going to see eye-to-eye.

Still I'm keen to visit flipout and DOMINO and I've said my piece, so I'll let this one lie ;)
 
OTRawrior said:
Alright Neil, for what it's worth I think your being uncharitable to my position on this and we aren't as at-odds as you seem to think we are. But we aren't going to see eye-to-eye.

Still I'm keen to visit flipout and DOMINO and I've said my piece, so I'll let this one lie ;)
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LOL - don't worry I'm not having a go at you personally man, just forums have tendency to go off on the most insane directions when we have reinforcement of a bad starting point that was never real in the first place! And everyone is welcome at Flip out and at Domino Arcade.
 
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So does this mean that Stern can produce whatever the hell they like safe in the knowledge that the distributors will have to buy it?

In essence they're insulated from the risk of producing a crap or unpopular game?
 
on new games yes.

But this is true in many industries, cars, baked beans, wine etc.
 
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