Actually, although I am an op tech now...I was the local distributors shop tech when they came out. I must have uncrated and checked about 25 of them, and out of those 25, I'd say about 7 needed major repairs / replacement of parts out of the box, and at least another 10 came back from test unsold and hung around the shop for a while waiting to be sold on the used list. The rest that stayed out I couldn't say, but I know they weren't very well received, as a number came in as trade-ins. We eventually stopped taking them.
I could see why ops don't like them, we hate tough service calls. Now if your customer has deep pockets and doesn't mind paying someone to come out and work on it perhaps multiple times, or maybe even having to scrap it due to lack of access to old computer parts (cough, Need 4 Speed original, Pin2000, Slide-It, cough) then I'd say go for one. Otherwise, I'd stay far, far, far, away.
-Dan
A longtime customer was asking us about getting a shuffle. We have had lots of WMS ss shuffles, but never one of these newer style ones. I bowled a couple frames on one it seems like 10 years ago, when they first came out , but have never had one in the shop.
It seems to get the knock from a lot of operators, but I 'd like to hear from the local guys down here, especially if they owned one or spent any time on one. I remember it as looking fairly nice, but hearing that it has a lot of maintenance and quality issues.
Randy
