Workers at Nintendo’s third-party repair partner were reportedly overwhelmed with Joy-Con repairs
Workers at Nintendo’s third-party repair facility reportedly faced a “very stressful” work environment caused by a deluge of Switches sent in for issues related to Joy-Con drift, according to a report from Kotaku. A former supervisor at the New York-based United Radio, the company that partners with Nintendo to repair broken devices, told Kotaku that the large volume of Joy-Con repairs resulted in a high turnover rate and “lots of” mistakes.
United Radio is its own company — Nintendo merely acts as the middleman, handling customer communications and leaving the repairing to United Radio, which serves Nintendo customers located in the eastern half of the US. The ubiquity of Joy-Con drift led to “easily thousands” of Joy-Cons that passed through United Radio in a single week, and prompted the company to set up a workstation dedicated to Joy-Con repair, the former supervisor told Kotaku.
Joy-Con drift is a widespread issue that causes the controllers to input movement when there is none, which often manifests itself as your character moving around on-screen when you’re not touching your thumbsticks. Although many Switch owners hoped the newer OLED model would fix Joy-Con drift, the issue still persists and Nintendo itself suggested it may never be fixed. In 2019, Nintendo started repairing Joy-Con drift for free, even with an expired warranty.
According to Kotaku, United Radio hires many temporary workers through the staffing firm Aerotek. Workers reportedly become eligible to be hired as full-time United Radio employees after three months of work. However, the former supervisor told Kotaku that most temporary employees stopped working after two-and-a-half months, whether they just didn’t show up for work or were fired.
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