I went to guitar center the other day to play a les Paul I've been lusting after. The auto tuners were gone. The guy said they were awful and that Gibson paid their tech to remove them and replace them with standard tuners.

Craig, didn't you think they were awesome? I was a bit surprised.

Do you mean the Min-ETune system?  It's frickin' amazing!  Go from 'I want to play' to 'I am playing' in the shortest time possible, almost instantly change the tuning to whatever you want (DADGAD, dropped D etc.) and makes string changing simplicity itself.  I have it fitted to my LP Studio 2013.  I was sceptical at first, but haven't looked back since getting the guitar.

Yeah, Ston, that's what I'm talking about. I don't know if they were removed nation wide, but in Richmond they were.

How do they expect people to tune their guitars?? 

gswitz
I went to guitar center the other day to play a les Paul I've been lusting after. The auto tuners were gone. The guy said they were awful and that Gibson paid their tech to remove them and replace them with standard tuners.

Craig, didn't you think they were awesome? I was a bit surprised.

I was recently talking with the manager at my local Guitar Center about this and he said that sales on the 2015 models were so bad that Gibson sent Rep's around to remove the tuners.  This allows GC to reduce the price on them as well and hopefully, sell the 2015 models.  They still have the neck width issue, though. 
 
2016 models have returned to the original neck size and no more tuners.  I was totally shocked that Gibson would not have made that an option in the first place.

The issue with Min-Etune is that the gears would strip.
If that happens, you're SOL until you can replace the tuner/servo.
While it works, Min-Etune is very cool.  
Especially nice if you're playing live and having to move to/from drop-D (reason I had it).
 
One of the gears stripped on me... and I was done.
The locking Grover Tuners are excellent.  Put those back on... and just tune manually.
 

I have locking Tuners on all my guitars...and always will...

That is all...

   Does anyone know if the stripped gear problem described above include the "G force" tuners as well as the "min E' tuners?  My impression (no facts) was that the G-force system was an improvement over the previous min E tuners.
The reference to the year 2015 would seem to lump the two system together.  Yes- I own a G-force Gibson guitar so if there is going to be a problem, I might just head it off.
   So far my guitar's tuner's have worked well.  It seemed to me that the biggest problem would be to train yourself or your roadies to change strings and work the robo machines.  They have a non-intuitive method of pushing little buttons to make things happen.  I have checked that if battery power fails, it is easy to tune manually so that argument against them is a straw dog.

You may never have a problem with the gears stripping.
I've talked with Guitar Center and a few luthiers who've bumped into the "stripped gear" issue numerous times.
That was enough for me...
I already had the Les Paul Standard... so I got the e-tuning system directly from Tronical.

The biggest reason that I got from the GC Manager at Central Express Way in Dallas, was that customers just didn't like the idea of paying $300+ more for the tuning system when they preferred to do that the old fashion way.  
 
I actually liked the LP Plus Less, the thinner bodied LP they experimented with in 2015.  They had them marked down from $1,899 to $1,200 the day I was in the store; around Christmas time.  They had just stripped the tuners from that guitar.  He told me to hold off for a while if I was interested in the guitar, because they would be dropping them even more dramatically than that.  He said, "know one wants them."