Girlfriend's 3DSXL's screen has broke - what now?

[Asura]

She noticed it when she turned the unit on this morning, a dark spot that over a few minutes grew into a blight about 3mm across, near the middle of the screen, offset a bit to the left. It's visible even when the unit is switched off; it looks like an upper layer of the screen has "separated" from the lower layers, leaving what looks a bit like an air pocket with a dark spot in the middle.

She's going to dig out the receipt while I'm at work today, but we know it's over a year old (Oct 2012, if I had to guess).

Has anyone ever dealt with Nintendo for stuff like this? Naturally she's a bit distraught about losing her Animal Crossing saves and town (it's an eShop download); I assume Nintendo would take care of that if we were to have it serviced.

Is there a phone number, or something?

[kryss]

On the 3DS menu, put the cursor over the AC game file and click the arrow that appears at the bottom of the screen, this will let you back up the save to the SD card which you can get move to PC (I'm not saying you can move it back though...but at least her animals will live on digitally somewhere...)

I'm not really much help other than that sorry.

[S3M]

She noticed it when she turned the unit on this morning, a dark spot that over a few minutes grew into a blight about 3mm across, near the middle of the screen, offset a bit to the left. It's visible even when the unit is switched off; it looks like an upper layer of the screen has "separated" from the lower layers, leaving what looks a bit like an air pocket with a dark spot in the middle.

She's going to dig out the receipt while I'm at work today, but we know it's over a year old (Oct 2012, if I had to guess).

Has anyone ever dealt with Nintendo for stuff like this? Naturally she's a bit distraught about losing her Animal Crossing saves and town (it's an eShop download); I assume Nintendo would take care of that if we were to have it serviced.

Is there a phone number, or something?

As it's less than two years old it will fall under the EU return act so you can return it to the retailer but not the manufactor.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1677034/Two-year-warranty-EU-law.html

Nintendo do offer repairs but will charge, have to check with them about eshop downloads as long as they fix your console you should be ok for the saves. If they have to issue a replacement unit you might be in for a bit of a rough ride as I don't believe they transfer digital content from what I read and seen other user say. Best to contact them directly and find out however.

Their UK contact details are on this page:

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Contact/Contact-621598.html

[CatCopter]

As it's less than two years old it will fall under the EU return act so you can return it to the retailer but not the manufactor.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1677034/Two-year-warranty-EU-law.html

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Co...ct-621598.html

As the damage is to the screen it will probbably be very difficult to get a refund from the retailer, they usually class such damage as accidental or customer miss use.

[QualityChimp]

Simple resolution: Get a new girlfriend with a working 3DSXL.

[kryss]

Simple resolution: Get a new girlfriend with a working 3DSXL.

I think more like "I'm sorry, the two of you will have to go back to making conversation now..."

[speedlolita]

Get another XL and swap the innards?

[wakka]

What and immediately void the warranty of the new one? That doesn't seem like a good strategy.

I believe Nintendo will allow you to do a one-time transfer to a newly purchased system. So if you bought a new one, you could push all of the purchased games, savegames etc over to the new one, and the original busted system will be wiped. You could then try to return the original to the shop where you bought it or, alternatively, recoup some money by selling it on Ebay for parts.

Oh and if she likes Yoshi, Zavvi are currently doing the green/white Yoshi LE for ?150.

[speedlolita]

Warranty? What's that then?

[Asura]

Thanks all, managed to get in touch with Nintendo. They're going to take the unit and give us a quote before making repairs; all in all their service has been quite good so far.

[Asura]

Quick follow-up question; someone above mentioned how to back individual games to the SD card - is there a way to do some kind of full system backup? Otherwise, even if she backs up the saves, won't they be useless if Nintendo wipe the machine?

[blazing-star]

The saves can be backed up to a pc, if nintendo did wipe the machine they'd be safe, ready to drag and drop back to the card when it's back from repair, you can also transfer the file to another sd card.