Nintendo to Offer Free Joy-Con Repairs

Nintendo is changing their policy on repairing controllers experiencing “Joy-Con Drift.”

According to Kotaku, Nintendo changed their customer support page in the last few days. The page now includes a link to start a ticket to get your Joy-Con repaired.  The page used to only provide a link to a troubleshooting page before the change.

Now, Switch owners can get their Joy-Cons repaired by Nintendo for free. Switch owners who had their Joy-Cons repaired in the past are also eligible for a refund. Previously, Switch owners had to pay $40 plus shipping to repair their Joy-Cons.

Nintendo has not officially confirmed the change in policy; however, VICE Games confirmed the direction given to Nintendo’s customer support workers. According to VICE, Nintendo sent its customer support workers a document instructing them to help them troubleshoot the issue. If troubleshooting does not help, customer support is to offer a repair for 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.”

Sending in your Joy-Cons seems to only be a temporary fix for “Joy-Con Drift.” Many Switch owners have reported experiencing “drift” a few months after they return from Nintendo.

Nintendo has not answered questions regarding permanent fixes for the problem. Kotaku did receive a response regarding the increase in customers reporting the problem.

“At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them,” a representative from Nintendo told Kotaku in response questions about Joy-Con drift. “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.”