I turned on my Wii U for the first time in a couple of days and nothing would show up on my TV, and I couldn't get the gamepad to connect no matter how close I got. The Wii U's light just kept blinking blue.

I tried all the usual things, like disconnecting the power for 15 seconds, and I even tried a different HDMI cable and my Wii's component cable.

No Luck...

So I googled "Wii U blinking blue light" and apparently it means hardware failure, similar to the Xbox360's "Red ring of death"

My only option is to send it for repairs...

Has this happened to anyone else on these forums? How exactly do I send it for repairs, and will I lose all my save files?

Best place to start is by contacting Nintendo either by phone or email. They can tell you how to send it in for repairs and another other questions about their repair system.

i been saying wii u is trash lol...

So It begins the BLOD .. Lol

By your logic you are also calling the XBOX360 and PS3 trash due to their respective lights of 'death'.
Not that I'm arguing with you on that but it does seem like this 'BLOD' is isolated whereas I'm led to believe the XBOX and PS issues affected thousands.

Systems aren't made like they used to..
My gamepad ran out of juice while I was playing it, instead of charging it, I just turned off the system.
Bad move.
Apparently its a common issue that if your gamepad dies while the console is on, the gamepad dies.
So now it refuses to charge, I don't even get the charging indicator light. Didn't even last 2 months. Off to Nintendo you go little buddy.

Touch wood but I haven't had the Gamepad charging issue, nor the early system freezes and certainly not BLOD. I hope you guys grt your Wii U's back from repairs quick because I know how sucky it is being without your Games console.

UPDATE:
So I called Nintendo customer service and was put on hold for like 15 min. I wasn't too mad because they had awesome Zelda hold music.

When I finally got to talk to an actual person I told them the TV wasn't getting a signal, they kinda treated me like I was dumb. Asking if everything was connected, and if the TV was on the right input. Duh.

As soon as I said the words "blinking blue light" they knew exactly what was wrong. Is this really an isolated incident? I've yet to see a news story on this site, so maybe it is...

So I had to send it in for repairs. I'm still waiting to get it back. The only reason I sent it in was because they said there's a chance they could recover my save files. Otherwise I would have just taken it back to Bestbuy and gotten a new one.