Nintendo Switch: Lots of Joy-Con Repair Issues in the US

The so-called Joy-Con drift problem has plagued Nintendo’s controller for years. At least in the US, the frequency of the error, where the Joy-Cons analog sticks “drift” in one direction, apparently overloaded the repair service provider. Like colleagues from Kotaku citing a former employee of the Syracuse, New York-based repair service provider United Radio, reported that his former employer had to repair thousands of Nintendo Switch controllers each week.

Due to the sheer volume of orders, it is said that a dedicated workspace had to be created just for Joy-Con repairs. The US arm of the Japanese games group naturally outsources warranty repair processing to outside companies, so United Radio is practically responsible for most Joy-Con repairs throughout the eastern United States. While the report doesn’t give specific numbers, it’s from “hundreds of controllers” who arrived at the repair service every day.

Issues hinder Joy-Con repairs

United Radio reportedly uses the temporary staff to perform much of this work, which has created additional problems. In most cases, these are newly arrived people who have only been trained very briefly for repair work on switch controls and who have hardly any specialist knowledge. In addition, a large number of employees only stay in this position for a short time, so it is said that new employees must be constantly recruited and trained.

Due to the fact that the personnel department that provided the repair service employees repeatedly fired people shortly before the deadline for possible permanent employment by the customer, there are additional problems in managing the repairs to the Joy-Cons. Nintendo also exerts enormous pressure, which is another reason for errors in repairs, in addition to employee problems. Among other things, it is said that during the years 2017 to 2018, while Nintendo provided new replacement devices to every customer who returned their Joy-Cons due to problems, they later gave up.

Since then, the repair service providers had to fix the defects in every pair of controllers that came in, with the service provider’s manufacturer requiring the service provider to repair 90 percent of the controllers delivered within four days. It is not the first time that problems with Nintendo’s handling of warranty matters in the US have become known. The United Radio company carries out work on defective Switch consoles, among other things. There have already been instances where the customers’ consoles were returned with other users’ game saves and account information, or even all data on the console was deleted as of a result of these issues.