Kotaku
Nintendo, while still standing behind their claims that DS Lite hinge cracks are a minor problem, is now offering to repair DS Lite's with the problem free of charge.
Yesterday a reader sent us word that when he called Nintendo's customer service he was told they would repair his cracked DS Lite hinge free of charge. The customer service rep told the reader that the repair "came up on her screen" as being a free. I contacted Nintendo about it immediately and after a bit of a delay they responded with this new canned response:
"In the U.S., the reported number of small cosmetic cracks in the plastic hinge of DS Lite systems represents less than 0.02 percent of the total units sold. This cosmetic issue in no way impacts the gameplay or integrity of the DS Lite. Nintendo stands behind the quality of our products and encourages DS Lite owners to contact our Customer Service Department if they are not happy with the functionality of their systems."
While it doesn't outright confirm they are doing free repairs, it certainly implies that they are. Since Nintendo was unable to confirm or deny that they were doing the repairs free of charge I decided to just call the company's customer service department directly.
The customer service guy asked me about how the crack formed and when I told him I didn't know, that I noticed it after reading about it on Kotaku, he said that since the information is getting out there and going "kinda wild" Nintendo has decided that they are willing to take a look at DS Lites with cracked hinges.
He stressed that usually Nintendo does not warranty physical damage to their cases because it is usually just cosmetic. I asked him what the process was and he said they would send me out a UPS label and once I shipped my DS Lite to them they would look at it and make sure it wasn't caused by misuse. I asked him how they would figure that out and he said they would go in and make sure something wasn't tightened to tight and if that was the issue they would repair it and send it back to me in two to three weeks with a new one year warrant.
So to summarize, if your DS Lite has the hinge crack that we've all seen, then Nintendo will likely repair it free of charge. It also sounds like Nintendo may have figured out that the crack was caused by overtightening.
