If you live east of the Mississippi and have ever had to send your Switch to Nintendo for Joy-Con drift, then it’s definitely gone through a single repair shop in Syracuse, New York. Although Nintendo handled the process for filing repairs, the actual work was done by a company called United Radio. According to a former supervisor in the Switch repair department who spoke to him my box On condition of anonymity, the volume of defective Joy-Cons arriving at the store was “very stressful” and contributed to high sales, which in turn led to “many” repair failures.
The harmful phenomenon known as Joy-Con Drift has been a major source of frustration for Switch owners since the console launched in 2017. After some use, the thumbsticks on the controllers often begin to register movement, even when in a neutral position. The problem is so widespread and serious that several class action lawsuits about the issue have been brought against Nintendo, and in a rare move, The company’s president apologized for the problems it caused the customers. The conversation about faulty thumbsticks was so widespread that even Valve had to address the possibility of a Steam deck drift in one IGN interview.
According to our source, who my box has independently confirmed that work was done to a high standard within the repair shop, the hardware’s flawed design was felt most strongly by those tasked with repairing the hundreds of controllers that were flooded each day. They said that “easily thousands of Joy-Cons came through every week.” United Radio confirmed over the phone that they do Switch repairs, but the customer-facing process is through Nintendo. United Radio relied on temporary workers who were placed Aerotek, a personnel service provider. The former supervisor said, “We ended up having to set up a whole new workstation just for Joy-Con repair.”
A lack of seasoned expertise among the staff led to common errors in Nintendo Switch repairs, our source claims. Because United Radio struggled with employee retention, many of the staff were inexperienced. Aerotek temps could be hired full-time by United Radio after three months, but many never made it past two and a half years. “Small layoffs” from Aerotek and “people not showing up” also contributed to the high turnover, the former supervisor said.
my boxThe source of was the only permanent member of the team who is a native English speaker. Most of the temporary workers trained by the source are Vietnamese immigrants who are less proficient in English. (Corresponding 2021 US Census Bureau estimates, 6.9 percent of the people living in Syracuse are of Asian descent.) This means that few of them could speak English well enough to act as a liaison between the coach and the rest of the staff. Our source estimated that about two-thirds of the repair workers were Vietnamese. Other languages spoken on the ground included Spanish, Swahili and other South Asian languages. The workers have work visas or are American citizens. The Nintendo repair team even celebrated that some of their colleagues passed their citizenship tests while they were employed. Despite the communicative challenges, these employees often stayed “the longest”. Still, the need to constantly train new employees put a significant strain on the team’s ability to oversee repairs.
Corresponding my box‘s source, customers who sent in their 2017-2018 Joy-Cons received new replacement units. For a while, this quick fix helped ease the pressure. After that first year, however, the store’s staff were forced to repair each set of Joy-Cons. The turnaround times were tight and the pace was difficult to maintain. The shop was held to a standard of repairing 90 percent of incoming Joy-Cons within four days, whether or not the staffing company sent them new workers.
But not only the workshop staff had problems due to the conditions at United Radio. The customer experience was also affected at times. A repaired Switch was sent to a Nintendo customer with a fatal error save another customer account and data. In a Reddit post, the client said: “I hold United Repair (sic) responsible for the unprofessional and poor handling of my property. They totally disregarded my console and saved data and cost me the 90+ hours I put into Zelda BotW. I also blame Nintendo for their lack of understanding [of] the modern gamer and their need to be able to secure stored data.”
In response to the incident, the source said United Radio had proposed and implemented a new policy whereby a Switch would be factory erased if its serial number could not be verified during the repair process. Because of this, some Switch owners have occasionally their data has been erased after sending in their consoles for repair. Nintendo has not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Nintendo of America’s reliance on third-party contract labor isn’t just limited to its repair shops. The game publisher also recently got caught up in a major industrial dispute in its home state of Washington. A worker Filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board last week and the case is currently pending.
