"We're trying to educate our servicemen to gear themselves
toward the logic end of the machines rather than the mechanical end"
way, I have to qualify that .02 on arcade games
because we don't have that many arcade games on
our route. But those that we do have are the result
of having narrowed the field of arcade pieces to the
most reliable. I should also add, by the way, that
this same formula can be used to see which
manufacturer's games are proving most reliable.
PLA Y METER: How do these ratios help you?
MENDELSOHN: They serve as a gauge and give
me an idea of my profit. This ratio is what I look to,
to reflect the service end of my business. There are,
of course, other things which I have to consider,
like how much my parts cost. So I have my parts
broken down too. For instance, up to this time,
mechanical pinballs have been costing me about
three dollars per part, and digital parts around
seven dollars. That includes parts and repairs that
we may have to have done by a distributor.
PLA Y METER: Is there any particular problem
you find that keeps cropping up in solid state
equipment?
MENDELSOHN: Obviously the downtime in-
creases with solid state games because your
mechanic can no longer fix all the machines right
there on location. And that's a problem. We're
trying to deal with this by educating our
servicemen to gear themselves toward the logic end
of the machines rather than the mechanical end.
Games Unlimited key personnel (from left) Michael
Mendelsohn, president; Mike Watts, s'ervice
manager; and Greg Stephens, vice president of
operations.
10
PLAY METER: Do you do your own board repair?
MENDELSOHN: Yes. Right now we're doing a
little over fifty percent of our own logic repair.
We've got a relatively new technician, and we're
still in the stage of educating him. But our goal is
that within a half a year we hope to be back up to
doing 75 percent of our own board repair. That's
about where I want to be at the moment. If we can
do 75 percent of all our own board repair, I think
the distributors are capable enough to handle the
rest for us, and we'll come out ahead in the profit
picture. As far as our wall games, though, we have
had to do almost all our own board repair. We're
pretty heavy into wall games-about twenty
percent of our entire operation is in this area, but
unfortunately, none of the distributors have done a
really good job on their repair of wall games. In
fact, the manufacturers don't give us too much help
either; so we have been forced to develop all our
own testing and repair equipment on wall games.
PLAY METER: Now that you're doing your own
board repair, what are some other problems you're
faced with?
MENDELSOHN: When a machine is out of order in
the field and cannot be fixed by that mechanic, and
he has tried to get help from our technician and
maybe sometimes even from our distributor, that
piece will come into the shop. We try to avert
problems by stocking the parts, but it can get quite
expensive to stock all the parts that you might need
to fix any logic monitor. And it can be really time
consuming too, especially with all the new games
that we're buying. Also, there used to be a big
problem getting the manuals and the schematics
when a game first came out, but that's getting
better. We're still having problems getting the
schematics sometimes when the game first comes
out, but the situation is improving. Another
problem with doing your own board repair is the
availability of qualified technicians and what it costs
you. There's a lot of competition from other fields
that can afford to pay higher for this type of
technical help.
PLAY METER: Where do you find a qualified
technician who has experience in logic board repair
and digital electronics?
MENDELSOHN: Very often there are people
switching jobs around, and this is always a good
source. But my favorite source is to go to the
electronics departments of the city colleges and talk
to the teachers and find out if they have students
who'll be graduating soon who might be interested
and qualified for this type of position. There's quite
a bit of training involved. But it's really worthwhile
if you get the type of person with the right attitude.
I might be a rebel when it comes to hiring, but I
don't believe in going too much into our field to find
qualified help. There are three things that are
PLAY METER, July, 1978