bteeter
New member
Time to vent a little. I am a small time operator. I bought an existing business about a year ago and have grown it steadily since.
I now have about 70 machines. Mostly older machines from the late 80's and 90's. I have a few machines made since 2000.
So, naturally, I have had to do a lot of repairs. The previous owner didn't do any for years so I have become good at a lot of common repairs, lcd screen swaps, etc.
I've bought a fair number of parts from here, ebay and other places. I gotta say. There are a LOT of scammers selling arcade parts.
Just tonight, I took parts off a 2nd Centipede cocktail, one at a time, to try to diagnose what was wrong with a Centipede cocktail I've been working on for ages. When I bought it, I knew it had a bad game board.
So, I bought a "good" one from here at KLOV. Installed it, and it mostly worked, but the video was really bad. Since the previous board didn't work, I figured bad monitor. Replaced the monitor, no luck, just got a really bad faded picture. Replaced the connector, same. Checked power, did all the standard troubleshooting - found nothing. Replaced the monitor and connector with a custom connector, VGA Converter, LCD monitor - still same crap picture.
On a whim tonight, I swapped game boards with the one from the 2nd cocktail I picked up last week. Bingo it works.
So, basically, I got sold a broken Centipede PCB for like $100 from a user here. Nice.
A week or so ago, I was sold a "working" DDR disc and security key on ebay that showed up and did not work. Before that a "working" CD-ROM drive to replace a dead one in another machine. It showed up dead too.
Last year I paid a dude here on KLOV to repair 3 Asteroids main boards, something close to $300. Got them back. 1 worked, 1 worked then glitched and stopped working, 1 was DOA - worse than when I sent it. Got a "sorry" but no refund or offer to re-repair.
I could go on and on. I'd say I've had a least a dozen experiences like this in the past year buying parts.
Surely its not just bad luck. It seems to me that there are a lot of scammers out there selling old broken stuff, hoping that no one ever realizes. I'm saddened that tonight I realized I've been sold 3 sets of stuff here on KLOV that did not work. I've probably only done 5-6 transactions here total, and I'm under 50% of getting what I paid for.
So, what do you guys do to avoid this? Is there any more reliable sources for older parts, or do you all just deal with this and hope to get good stuff more than not?
I now have about 70 machines. Mostly older machines from the late 80's and 90's. I have a few machines made since 2000.
So, naturally, I have had to do a lot of repairs. The previous owner didn't do any for years so I have become good at a lot of common repairs, lcd screen swaps, etc.
I've bought a fair number of parts from here, ebay and other places. I gotta say. There are a LOT of scammers selling arcade parts.
Just tonight, I took parts off a 2nd Centipede cocktail, one at a time, to try to diagnose what was wrong with a Centipede cocktail I've been working on for ages. When I bought it, I knew it had a bad game board.
So, I bought a "good" one from here at KLOV. Installed it, and it mostly worked, but the video was really bad. Since the previous board didn't work, I figured bad monitor. Replaced the monitor, no luck, just got a really bad faded picture. Replaced the connector, same. Checked power, did all the standard troubleshooting - found nothing. Replaced the monitor and connector with a custom connector, VGA Converter, LCD monitor - still same crap picture.
On a whim tonight, I swapped game boards with the one from the 2nd cocktail I picked up last week. Bingo it works.
So, basically, I got sold a broken Centipede PCB for like $100 from a user here. Nice.
A week or so ago, I was sold a "working" DDR disc and security key on ebay that showed up and did not work. Before that a "working" CD-ROM drive to replace a dead one in another machine. It showed up dead too.
Last year I paid a dude here on KLOV to repair 3 Asteroids main boards, something close to $300. Got them back. 1 worked, 1 worked then glitched and stopped working, 1 was DOA - worse than when I sent it. Got a "sorry" but no refund or offer to re-repair.
I could go on and on. I'd say I've had a least a dozen experiences like this in the past year buying parts.
Surely its not just bad luck. It seems to me that there are a lot of scammers out there selling old broken stuff, hoping that no one ever realizes. I'm saddened that tonight I realized I've been sold 3 sets of stuff here on KLOV that did not work. I've probably only done 5-6 transactions here total, and I'm under 50% of getting what I paid for.
So, what do you guys do to avoid this? Is there any more reliable sources for older parts, or do you all just deal with this and hope to get good stuff more than not?



