So, I carry my 3DS around with me everywhere for steps and StreetPasses, and I since it came out I do this everyday. Well, a few months ago (two days before my wedding in fact), I'm at Wal-Mart, have my 3DS, leave Wal-Mart, realize I don't have my 3DS anymore, and since a non-trivial percentage of the people in Wal-Mart are trash that don't deserve the air they breathe, when I return to Wal-Mart the 3DS is long long gone (along with about 15 games and likely a couple of thousand hours time put into those games and over 1 million steps and 1986 StreetPasses and all puzzle pieces and a shit ton of eShop stuff). So soon after I get a replacement 3DS, and I contact Nintendo about potentially replacing my eShop content. They say I need a police report. No problem. I go get a police report. Of course, I'm in the middle of a wedding and collecting jobs, so it does take me a little while to do all this. Emailed them the police report and all the information on the systems (I had all the serial numbers thanks to Club Nintendo), and yesterday I get a call from them. They cannot simply transfer the rights to my new system. So, what they did instead, was put the equivalent amount of money for the purchases on my eShop. So right now, I have $388 in eShop credit. They also took the time to add me back into the Ambassador Program and sent me new codes for games I had gotten for free (Excitebike and Twin Bee). They did overlook my owning the special Donkey Kong with the pie factory, but I emailed them about that and hopefully they'll send me a code for it as well. Anyways, I was very impressed with how quickly they handled it and how cool they were about things. Granted, I have a long weekend of downloading stuff ahead of me, but... now I can skip some of the games I didn't like and I can check out more of the new stuff, so I'm not complaining (well, I'll always complain about the lost StreetPasses and steps and Activity Log info, that stuff just cannot be replaced, and if I ever StreetPass with my old 3DS I will hunt that person down... ).
I have to send in my 3DS to Nintendo soon to fix a problem with my touchscreen. This story of yours makes me feel a bit better about doing this since some other companies don't take responsibility. *COUGH*SONY*COUGH*
I've had nothing but positive support from Nintendo. Every transaction has went flawless, same with microsoft. Same can NOT be said about sony...
I got a launch model cosmo black 3DS (got it 3 days after it was out in USA) and it had the most likely now famous camera glitch. They repaired it the first time for absolutely nothing. Even mailed me the shipping label to stick on the box when I sent it in. Got it fixed and returned really quick. Sadly the problem returned not too long ago and I can't get it fixed again since the warranty has run out now. Oh well...
Just because the warrenty is out doesn't mean so. If it's a defect, they might still fix it for free. You should atleast contact them again to ask.
I assure you it is a design defect, I repaired one of these the other day, the ribbon cable was torn 3/4 of the way through. This is the EXACT same problem that causes the top screens on the DSi/lite/XL to die, it has to do with the way the ribbon cables are coiled through the hinge, the outermost one eventually tears or shorts. This has been a problem since the GBA SP and seems to get more common as nintendo shoves more cables in there. The 3DS has 4 cables going through the hinge!
I also had great past experiences with Nintendo. I remember many years ago, my little cousin came over one day and while we were playing Smash Bros. on the GameCube, he pulled on the controller cord and my GameCube smashed into the ground (Hard tile floor). I knew that my warranty was expired but I wanted to ask Nintendo what they would charge to fix it. I called and I remember them giving me a price I knew couldn't afford on my little after school part-time job. I got desperate and started telling them how I pretty much own every Nintendo product ever made, had all past consoles, have a shitload of NES, SNES, GB, GBC, N64 games etc. I even went so far as to tell them I would take pictures and send it to them as proof. So they put me on hold for almost a half hour and I couldn't believe that they told me they would repair it for free out of courtesy as long as I shipped it to them myself. Apparently, according to the person I talked to, they said my claims were believable since I was already in their records because I use to order Gameboy battery covers from them when I was much younger. Like I said before, Nintendo has never done wrong by me. I'll never forget what they did for me.
I don't think I've ever had a problem with a Nintendo product, so I've never had a reason to call their customer support. I did have a problem with my previous GBA SP not charging properly, but that was of course well out of warranty. It could have been due to misuse of the device. I also had a broken Gamecube, but that was because I spilled ice and water all over it, so that was obviously my fault. In that case, I had the Best Buy extended warranty, so they replaced it with a new one for free. I think in general, Nintendo treats their customers pretty well. I've been using Club Nintendo for a while, and though the American version probably isn't as cool as the Japanese one, you can nonetheless get some pretty cool items just for registering your Nintendo stuff. In that way, it's a lot better than any of the other "rewards programs" I've ever used, just in terms of the quality of stuff available.
Yeah, Club Nintendo is fantastic. Platinum Rewards have been a bit weak the past two years though. But overall, it's awesome.
Seriously, you can get hanafudo cards out of them with enough points! They've always had excellent customer service, and if there's one thing that really makes a company it's customer service. I haven't had to use their customer service in a long while. Nothing ever seems to go wrong with their products in the first place. We're lucky enough to have an authorized repair place around here, and they will replace or repair pretty much anything under warrantee for free. They'll also do older products up until when they run out of parts for a smaller fee than delivering it via mail. Had a cart slot for a toaster NES replaced, a GBC replaced with a faulty power cable connector, and a copy of Link's Awakening replaced when one of the chips did something peculiar (no backgrounds!).
Here's my "tl;dr" post of the year, but it may help someone if they run into my problem. My Wii U wasn't updating. It would get to 33% and then error saying to restart the Wii U and try again. If I skipped the update I couldn't go into the eShop, but I could still access Miiverse and the video services and internet and online play, just not the eShop. So it was mildly irritating. Now at this juncture in the story, let it be known that I use my main TV screen for my PC and when I use my Wii U I use the screen on the gamepad. I strolled through the Nintendo website, this issue had only been asked once and the Nintendo rep said to check the Nintendo Forums, saying that they've seen some success reported. So I found the thread they were referring to and it said to wipe the harddrive, that the sectors could be cleared, the download for the update could fully download and you could just redownload your games. I said WHATEVER, I'll do it, no matter how long it takes. I popped in a USB device and formatted it for my saves and copied all of my saves over to it. Then I went to format the harddrive. Now here's where not having both screens matters, because apparently the bottom screen asks you if you're positive that you want to clear the harddrive, but the TOP SCREEN tells you that if you continue, you will not be able to keep your saves. On top of that, it also mentions any save files on a USB device cannot be transferred back because it believes (for a lack of a better description) that it's a new Wii U and you can't transfer saves between Wii U's. SO NEEDLESS TO SAY THE OPTION ON THE FORUM DID NOT WORK. My harddrive didn't fully format, it had an error, and when the Wii U restarted it was back to it's original out of box startup screen. So I was angry. I called Nintendo the next day. They took my info, typed in the description of my complaint, I told her it gave me harddrive errors, she said "that's a new one" and then asked me if I left my saves intact so that they could move them from the old system to a new one if they can't fix it. I said NO begrudgingly. So anyway, she told me how to pack it and she sent me an email with the label. Then I remembered that I had my vWii softmodded for the Homebrew Channel. I also remembered that there's no way to clear your history on your vWii so they could go back and see that I loaded the Homebrew Channel like once a day. Needless to say I didn't know what to do. So then I just decided, fuck it, I'll just brick the vWii. So I installed some IOS mods that explicitly say they'll brick your system if installed on a vWii, and it worked like a charm. So when Nintendo got it, they just figured it was screwed beyond all reason and sent me a new Wii U (system only, they told me to keep the gamepad) the same day that they got my shitty one back. Also, don't blame the vWii softmod, because the vWii is sandboxed, something was genuinely wrong. Also, skip all of the steps I went through and just call Nintendo. YOU ROCK NINTENDO.
