It looks that Nintendo has made a sudden change of heart revolving around problems that have plagued Nintendo Switch owners when it comes to issues affecting the detachable joy-cons as it was recently reported by Vice’s Waypoint that Nintendo have adjusted their policy on repairing the controllers to disregard charging for the service and will provide the repair for free.
According to the gaming division under Vice, Waypoint received a memo from an Nintendo representative stating that any further repairs on consumer’s joy-con controllers will be absolutely free.
Customers will no longer be requested to provide proof of purchase for Joy-Con repairs,” the internal customer service details say. “Additionally it is not necessary to confirm warranty status. If a customer requests a refund for a previously paid Joy-Con repair […] confirm the prior repair and then issue a refund.
This falls from the previous lawsuit that was filed against Nintendo last week where the Switch owner following their repair on the joy-con to fix the ‘drift’ problem affecting the controller’s analog sticks lasted only a few days. The mentioned ‘drift’ issue for the joy-con is when the control sticks on the controllers begin to move on their own: this usually results from long-use of the controller that makes this problem occur.
Previously, Nintendo’s policy on the repair for all incidents circulating around the Switch’s controllers were met with a first year warranty to receive repair covered by the hardware’s limited warranty. However, owners outside on that year span would have to send their joy-cons to Nintendo and be charged $40 to repair the controller. Still on the subject of the problematic ‘drift’ issue, guarantee to withhold the joy-cons from reacquiring the same problem was not warranted as seen from the recent issue.
Deprived from the statement one those who have already been issued repair on the controllers, Nintendo stated that those customers will be refunded the paid amount. Waypoint when questioning Nintendo was later given a statement on the current policy change: “At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them. We are aware of recent reports that some Joy-Con controllers are not responding correctly. We want our consumers to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we always encourage them to visit http://support.nintendo.com so we can help.”
This is not the first instance that Nintendo has decided to change their way when it comes to consumers: last year, Nintendo lightened up on their creator guidelines for how content creators can upload licensed properties from the Japanese company.
Are you one of the victims affected by the joy-con ‘drift’ problem?
Source: Waypoint
