Nintendo Switch Repair

William has been complaining that his Nintendo Switch “joycon” is suffering from drift again. Apparently, this is a chronic design flaw of the controller that resulted in a law suit and a poorly publicized repair program.

I returned both boys’ controllers once and am not sure Nintendo will fix them again. And while the turn around it surprisingly fast, William wanted a fix NOW!

The link to the repair site is here: https://joyconrepair.nintendo.com/

I did not want to spend $79 for new controllers…so after a quick bit of googling, I found this permanent fix:

While pretty straight forward, when I went to open the controllers, I found they use a never before encountered screw head:

Microcenter had a precision screw set but it was $35. Figured that was crazy to avoid a $79 purchase and eventually found a $19 option at Best Buy. When I got there, the staff insisted they didn’t sell anything like this. After some persistence, one of the guys found a $24 set that did not include the size I wanted and a $69 set I did not want to buy. 15 minutes and 4 guys later, they found the proper set.

So an hour adventure at Best Buy ended with a 5 minute fix. Seems to be working. But now I am sure William wanted to use this as an excuse for a different color controller and is not thrilled I fixed his issue with a piece of cardboard.