"Theres a market out there of dudes who will say “take my money” no matter what the outcome - win, lose or draw."
"More widely it's mad to me how willing people are to accept issues with NIB machines as par-for-the-course, considering again you can be talking up to/more than 10k! For me, its like with video games but 100x as expensive: never pre-order!"
I am fairly new to the the whole pinball 'community' side of things, having been a pinball enthusiast in isolation for twenty odd years. Up until recently I had no experience of NIB machines.
Being brutally honest; I can't believe that anyone accepts the state of some of these machines are shipped in. The quality from the world's biggest manufacturer is just awful!
Being late to the whole scene, my first experience of a 'raw' NIB was Kris's AIQ. I was genuinely shocked and really quite ****ed off at the total lack of QA on the machines. I can accept that the hardware might have unforeseen bugs (such as a ball getting stuck somewhere weird once in a while).
What I cannot accept is part of Kris's playfield had to stripped back because the right orbit guide was so bent it killed the shot 70% of the time (a key shot in the game!). That was the worst issue but there were other very well documented problems with the playfield.
I find the whole idea of having to 'fix' new machines totally bewildering, however the community seems to accept it.
The QA (Quality Assurance) standards are shockingly bad, especially given:
- These are NOT cheap items.
- They are 'made with pride' in the USA, not outsourced to some sweatshop in the far east (although they might make a better job of it!)
- They are sold as 'New in Box'; Can you image buying anything else NEW in a sealed box with the list of issues that pinballs have?
- The issues are normally pretty well publicised and documented
- Enthusiasts are designing, making and marketing replacement parts to fix basic machine issues.
- Manufacturers are not living in a vacuum; they must be aware of the negativity surrounding their products and yet do nothing.
Dacia can produce a four door family hatchback (Sandero) for £10,145 and that has approximately 30,000 parts and better build quality than a pinball machine that costs the same price (using USA pricing, rather than the artificially inflated UK prices).
You might argue that a car is mass produced and a pinball is low volume, but that argument works both ways; a pinball is supposed to be a quality, hand built item.
The total lack of basic QA is appalling. If it were anything other than a pinball it would be rejected as unacceptable but because we are enthusiasts, and many of us are capable of fixing the issues on these machines, we continue to accept the poor quality that some manufacturers produce.
Reading through Pinside and other forums, going back years, this has been the case.
I can only imagine how difficult it must be for resellers to have to deal with this lack of quality.
Those are my thoughts, and I'm sure the first comment will be something like "well, you don't have to buy them". Absolutely correct. I am now sure that I will never buy a NIB from the world's biggest manufacturer until the QA improves.
I am happy to buy a CGC (Cactus Canyon) right now because I believe CGC has better QA and the price point is significantly lower.