I have many friends in Qld & other states who I see often who have many BNIB Stern purchases under their belts & I see their machines often & they don't have any of these problems. They have new Kiss, Mustang, TWDead & so on.
I looked at their games hard & not an issue.

Maybe we should actually ask people who have actually purchased a BNIB Stern if they have had a issue with the playfield & get some real data from the masses instead of a few isolated incidences.
That would be an objective way for this thread to get some fresh data instead of it just being about a few machines ?