Nintendo announced Tuesday that it will repair free of charge and beyond the warranty period the defective controllers of its Switch game console purchased in Europe, following an action by consumer associations.
“Nintendo is offering consumers who purchased the affected product in the European Economic Area (EU+Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein), the United Kingdom and Switzerland only repairs“of this premature failure of the levers”be carried out free of charge by official Nintendo repair centers“, says the Japanese console manufacturer in a press release.
He specifies that this offer applies even if the defect is due to wear and even if the 24-month warranty has expired.
This commitment follows an alert from the European Consumers’ Organization (BEUC) in January 2021 to the European Commission.
BEUC member organizations had received nearly 25,000 complaints from Switch users, noting premature wear of the “Joy-Con” controllers, causing uncontrollable movements of the characters on the screen.
According to consumer testimonials, 88% of Switch controllers failed within the first two years of use.
BEUC hailed a “tangible victory for consumers“. “Many have had to pay for costly repairs or replacements for a product that they could reasonably have expected to last for several years.“, reacted Ursula Pachl, deputy director general of this organization.
“However, this is only a short-term solution (…) Nintendo can nevertheless continue to sell the console with the potential bug“, she lamented.
“Premature obsolescence of consumer goods is unacceptable: it contributes to growing mountains of e-waste and costs consumers money“, she pointed out.
On March 22, the European Commission presented draft legislation to make it easier and cheaper for consumers to have their damaged or faulty products repaired, including after the warranty period has expired.
Every year, discarded repairable products represent some 35 million tonnes of waste in the EU, while European consumers lose 12 billion euros buying a new good instead of repairing the old one, estimates the executive European.