Problem W/Eldorado Games?

Skoalman1969

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I was just wondering if anyone on here has dealt with Eldorado games before? I know they have been in business for a long time. I haver used them in the past but my last transaction has left a bad taste in my mouth. Just curious if anyone else has had a bad experience with them?
 
Yeah, from what I read, everyone has had a bad experience with them. The gist I get of it is that the guys who used to repair boards left the company or were fired, so now they basically swap boards out and generally don't test them. Lots and lots of people pretty pissed off at them.
 
i used to use them alot when they were in anaheim ca. never had a problem at all. in fact they used to give me smoking deals on some of their nos artwork. i have not used them since they moved. but, i know alot of people are not happy with them.
 
there have been a number of people who have had problems with them, and a number who have reported having great service.

this is or was also true for Greg at GLS1 (currently not in business, AFAIK,) and David? at Arcade Circuit Board Repair in Texas. i had a fine experience with ACBR, the only service i've used besides Dick Millikan.
 
I sent a BZ set years ago and had no problems. Have also bought a boardset long ago. No recent activity with them, though.
 
Never sent them a board set however when I called the owner was pretty much rude to me. Was looking to buy a K6100 tube and he couldn't be bothered to send a picture of the screen burn. His "out" was saying all of the tubes had burn in - what do you expect for their age?

Well anyone that's ever been exposed to vector tubes knows there can be a BIG difference on burn "especially spot killer center burn" sizes.
No way in hell was I willing to buy one unseen. That didn't set well with me.
 
Well, if nobody else wants to post a negative story, then I will.

I bought a project Tapper years ago. I actually got the board set up and running by cleaning all the edge connectors, pulling, verifying, and re-seating all of the EPROMs and burning a replacement for one of the EPROMS that had gone bad.

There were three problems I had left that I couldn't figure out. One was a vertical bar that would come up in the middle of the screen sometimes when it started up. Once it was booted with that, it wouldn't go away and it would make the game unplayable. The second thing was a loud buzzing (and no, you don't need to refer me to a thread about MCR buzzing, I've since learned more). And the third thing was an intermittent dropout of some of the music... for example, where you would expect to hear

doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo

it would play

doo doo doo doo ___ doo doo doo ___ doo doo doo ___ ___ doo

So I called Eldorado (I think I spoke to John?) and described those three problems. He said to send the board set. He also said to send the power supply board. I replied that I had tested all the voltages and that they were fine, but he said that they needed the power supply for testing the PCB, so I said fine. I verified the price and asked him if I could just include the payment as a check in the shipping box and he said that would be fine.

I sent the board set and the power supply off and I included the check for the cost of the Tapper board set, as listed on the web site. A couple weeks later the board set comes back. I plug it into the cabinet and ALL THREE PROBLEMS are still there. Not one thing fixed.

So I called them (spoke to John again) and he says that they repaired it and it worked perfectly in their shop. I told him that I was still experiencing all three of the problems I sent it in for. So after going back and forth with him for awhile, finally he gets his repair guy to call me back. In talking with him I learn that there's a separate audio card in the cabinet. So I pulled that and cleaned all the connectors and stuff. Eventually, I got it so that the intermittent music problem would work sometimes and work not.

And the buzzing would happen sometimes and sometimes not.

The vertical bar down the middle issue never went away. But I did discover that if you turn it off and back on several times, eventually it will come up without the vertical bar problem. It's just some sort of random startup glitch.

So basically, they didn't fix anything and charged me $150 plus shipping for a few minutes of phone time with someone who helped me locate the external audio board and track down what the source of one of the problems was.

To add insult to injury, a couple weeks later they send me a bill for "repairing the power supply". This is completely ludicrous. I had thoroughly tested the power supply voltages before I sent it and they were fine. What's more, they system behaved EXACTLY THE SAME after I got the boards back as it did before I sent them off. EXACTLY. Not one change in behavior. So if they did any "repairs" to the power supply, they were totally unnecessary and made no difference.

I called to complain about them even daring to send me an additional bill when they didn't fix anything. John said that they had had to replace the Molex connector on the power supply. Funny, but it worked just fine before I sent it, and what's more I DIDN'T ASK them to do anything to the power supply and they never REQUESTED whether they wanted me to "repair" the power supply. I refused to pay the bill, and John said that they'd never do business with me again.

But why I would want to send another board set to a company that charged me money and did nothing, I can't imagine.

Note that I still have the Tapper, and it still exhibits all three of the symptoms that Eldorado claims to have fixed. Like I said, I have a workaround for the vertical bar issue, most of the time I can keep the buzzing pretty low, and sometimes if I futz around with the harness and the sound board I can get the music to play all the way, but most of the time not.

In retrospect, I wish I had shot video before I shipped the game and right after I got the boards back, so I could have documented the monumental fail non-fix by Eldorado better.

For a lot of stuff, they are your only choice for getting boards repaired, and I'm sure some people have had luck with them successfully repairing things. But for me, they didn't fix my problem, charged me anyway, and tried to charge me for something I didn't ask for (and that wasn't needed).

That's just my personal experience with them.
 
I have only used them once , and after my experience would only use them as a last resort.
About 3-4 years ago I sent them my BZ boards. They said it would be 2 weeks, it turned out to be 6 weeks and they were not the original boards I sent. Boards worked good for about 6 months, than started having small glitch problems here and there. Game was not played much for another few months. Problems got worse and I called them. They said it must be my wiring/PS. I checked it out, everything was fine(PS and power brick had been rebuilt). After 13 months from the time I got them, the boards died. Called them, they said they would be happy to fix them and send them back WITH A $150 CHECK for repairs. I appears I was 1 month past warranty.
I just recently had these boards repaired by another KLOV member and they have been working great for the last several months.
Aaron
 
Note that I still have the Tapper, and it still exhibits all three of the symptoms that Eldorado claims to have fixed. Like I said, I have a workaround for the vertical bar issue, most of the time I can keep the buzzing pretty low, and sometimes if I futz around with the harness and the sound board I can get the music to play all the way, but most of the time not.
Doesn't this tend to support their claim that the board is fine? :confused:
 
As far as board repair goes, I have found other places cheaper. I had a problem with a ms pac board a while back, I ran it down there and they charged me $60 to diagnose it and put a new ribbon cable on, and that was that.

As far as the other stuff goes it is a little pricey but it is only 30min from me. If I need something done quick I will take it there because of the location.

A local arcade (1984) uses them for just about everything and they get good service and I dont think they have had a problem.

I think its 6 in 1 hand half in the other.
 
I sent them a board which sat on their shelves un-repaired for 4 months. Every few weeks I would call for an update, and the fellow I spoke with would tell me some story of why they couldn't get to it, or why the guy who specialized in that board type was not in the shop. I tried to be very patient and give them the benefit of the doubt, but eventually I had to insist they send it back to me, which they did, un-repaired.

Perhaps this was an exception, but in my opinion: stay away.
 
So ElDorado should have taken the board in, diagnosed it, tested it, shipped it back out etc. all for free?

That's what I do. :) Now granted it takes about 5 min to set up and test a board I advertise, but I consider that lost time to be a loss-leader.
 
So ElDorado should have taken the board in, diagnosed it, tested it, shipped it back out etc. all for free?

Sounds like 2 problems are possibly the external sound board. Vertical bars would not have been. So what did they fix for free? Sounds like they did nothing except ship the boards back...
 
My advice is to not send them squat. I have seen some seriously poor soldering work from there on classic boards. Shameful work. I also had a game with a monitor chassis that was repaired by them and the flyback exploded pretty close to my face. When I got the chassis out and looked at it they repaired it by replacing the flyback and shorting the 1.25 amp fuse with a wire and not replacing any electrolytic capacitors. wtf!!!? You just can't get good hel these days. :cool:

I was just wondering if anyone on here has dealt with Eldorado games before? I know they have been in business for a long time. I haver used them in the past but my last transaction has left a bad taste in my mouth. Just curious if anyone else has had a bad experience with them?
 
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