@85vett, i don’t really see how verifying that the theft works out financially for the thief justifies it in any ethical way.
An official rep of the arcade relayed a message from the owner suggesting using quarters as an alternative for aggrieved customers, so it is straight up legit.
The owner’s claim that this was the first increase in ten years was erroneous. The token machine used to offer eighty-eight for twenty dollars, that was dropped a couple years ago to eighty for twenty. That’s a price increase of ten percent. (to be perfectly honest, I never counted them. The sign went away but I don’t know if the token count ever changed.)
Their loyalty program didn’t offer any advantage over the 88/20 pricing and requires a bunch of hoop-jumping.
If they stop using quarters/tokens and go to cards only I’m out.
Using tokens you bought elsewhere is theft of services. I know of one arcade in my area years ago had no problem having you arrested. I believe it’s a misdemeanor.
LTG : )
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Plus, the cost per machine used to be lower. $0.25 for an EM was not uncommon, and many machines were $0.50.
That’s not to say I don’t understand the need for price increases. I suspect the difficulty of obtaining a beverage permit at the original location partially contributes to to the need to make up money elsewhere. There’s also no doubt that pins are not where the money is and that maintenance is an expensive pain. (Though it doesn’t appear that much money has been put into maintenance.) Additionally, I’m sure the recent much-needed improvements to the facility are partially to blame. (Though the HVAC updates seem to have done jack squat.) Finally, if you’ve been out to eat lately, you’ll see that pinball prices aren’t the only thing that have risen in the last decade: things are more expensive all around.
However, price increases at the expense of goodwill of your hard core customer base are a bad deal. League players may not be a significant portion of the revenue stream, but I think we do serve a sort of role as “brand ambassadors.” When we see better-maintained machines for similar or lower prices in equally difficult markets, it’s no surprise that we feel ripped off and start talking bad (or stop talking at all) about the place.
Pro tip: Rummage through the Valpak, Student Insider, Round Rock Express programs, Austin Chronicle, Community Impact, Redplum, etc. for the coveted “$25 of tokens for $20” coupons.
I still haven’t figured out how the loyalty program works. The web interface for the player’s card info is abysmal. (I’ve tried it on 4 different browsers, and it renders unreadably on all of them.) Even when you are able to tease some information out of it, the values presented don’t make much sense. The one time I tried to cash in on some of the prizes that I thought I had earned, they didn’t have any of them and seemed completely unconcerned about that fact. They need a simpler, more transparent program that we can get excited about.
Yep. Gonna ask that we keep subsequent posts at least somewhat related to “coin drop at public locations hosting events.” Any future posts about token theft will be deleted (leaving everything as it currently stands for context within this thread for now).
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Our league fees we can address. That’s the entire point of this thread. If people are paying $10 or more in coin drop to participate then there isn’t room for a prize pool buy in on top of that, or at least that’s what it seems right now.
I personally have no problem with the league fees. While we can agree Pinball$ does an awful job maintaining their pins, using quarters negates the recent price hike.
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