Topic: Broken Switch charging port

I too have had this issue. Bought mine from Tesco direct, as it was 30 days after purchase they refused to swap or sort out a repair..instead referring me to Nintendo UK. I sent mine in then got an email saying the pins in the charging port had bent and I would have to pay £157 for repair.

I don’t understand how this could have happened, it has only ever been charged using the dock. It’s not like a throw the thing in there. If it has been damaged by reasonable every day use using the dock then this is clearly a flaw in the design.

How then, if it is a fairly common issue ( plenty of people complaining about the same thing online)..how is it that the warranty does not cover it? They have classed it as accidental damage. I am fuming!

If anyone has had any luck with this could you please give me a shout. I will be contacting trading standards in the morning and seeing if they can help out somehow.

Exact same issue here. We have had the switch for less than a year, and only ever charge it in its own dock. Sent it in for check and repair when its not charging and got quoted 157pounds.

Are you listening nintendo? we will never ever buy another nintendo product again, and will be advising all of our friends and family of your bad form in trying to escape warranty issues. The design of the switch is not fit for purpose imo if the doc itself can damage the female charging connector

A local firm is offering to change out the charging port for 40pounds. Warranty will be invalid but what warranty?

So angry, and will not let the kids buy any more switch games.

@steve07805
I have the same problem. Mine is 6 months old and I only use the charger it came with. It is under warranty so I sent it in for repairs and they told me it wasn't covered and to fix it it would cost me $100. So I told them to just send it back. Very disappointed in Nintendo. I did not stick anything in the port but the charger that came with it so I don't see how that doesn't fall under warranty. Anyways good luck with yours I would just switch platforms.

I bought my 6 year old the switch only a week ago, and having the same problem. Seems like Nintendo have produced a product which was not properly thought through. How can so many people have the same problem and yet Nintendo doesn’t want to take responsibility for having such a poor designed port. If someone wins with Nintendo, please post.

It might require replacing an entire circuit board and not just the connector. Modern electronics tend to have densely packed circuit boards crammed full of tiny surface mount components assembled by machines, and often replacing a single component is either not possible or not practical.

I'd be interested in knowing why Nintendo thinks the situation described in the opening post is the consumer's fault.

Here in the US, all Nintendo units are tracked by a unique serial number. When a console is sold, the retailer reports the serial number to Nintendo, and when you call to set up a repair, the representative will check your serial number to see if your system is still under warranty. It has been this way since at least the release of the 3DS.

Hi! I have the same issue: 3 months or so, broken port, official technical answer: "you have to replace the whole motherboard", so it is a very expensive repair.

1) I took it to a non offcial repair place and it was quite cheap to fix it.

2) I suspect that putting it on the flip side on the dock (and maybe forcing it a bit) might have damaged it. Who would do that? Most probably, your kids.

Might this be your case?

There seems to be a running theme here...
My sons charging port is the problem and comes up with error code: 2101-0001
Firstly it wouldn't charge for a few days, then suddenly sprung to life displaying the home screen. Great I thought, it's now working. Powered it off ready for my son to play it when he got home from school. It then displayed the error code. Contacted the "customer" support, then discovered the switch was 6 days out of warranty.
I bought it a few weeks before his birthday as stock was low, so in fact it was not switched on until his birthday. Nintendo did not want to know, saying rules are rules and you lose. Going to trading standards/ombudsman to see where I stand legally in the UK. Nintendo have lost a very good customer and will never go back!!

A quick update: The switch has been "bricked" by a Nintendo firmware update. This was due to the switch using my phone charger instead of the official Nintendo charger (which is connected to the official dock in my sons bedroom). The firmware detected an unofficial lead resulting in it thinking I'm trying to "hack" the machine. Once bricked it cannot be reversed. A local technician doubted theres anything wrong with the charging unit, suspecting it's the chipset that's been fried by Nintendo.
I will keep you updated....

@Bintendo Third party chargers don't brick switches due to it looking like a "hack". There's a voltage spec, and it's highly recommended to use USB-C-USB-C chargers, and Nintendo recommends otherwise that it needs a 56k OHM resistor on the cable if you're doing USB-A to USB-C. If it bricked the switch it was either a short relating to your existing charging port problem, or possibly you fried/undervolted the charging circuit with a charger/cable supplying incorrect voltage which is noted in the official FAQ.

That part really sucks, but it's quite certain it was not "bricked" remotely due to it looking like you were hacking it. It's an electrical problem of one form or another.

ok this may not have anything to do with anything but I got my switch today, and the ac charger I plug into my console unit can be inserted both ways.. is that normal? i dont wanna break anything

I've seen enough of these posts over here and reddit to really start to wonder.

@Bintendo @NEStalgia I've used plenty of unofficial chargers, from phone usb things to car phone chargers. Never bricked my system. Unless you used a really bad cable (I used a gas station cable once too), I dont see how the cable did this. With all the scare they have, they might as well have gone proprietary.

@Jarester yes, USB-C cables can be put it either way.

@Pawa20 USB C is the same either way. The Switch shell will not let you put it in backwards however. Look at the divot on the back.

@Trajan ok, I thought I may have broke mine eventually as the op did if I didnt put it in correctly and would suggest that to may have caused their issue.

@Trajan I think they're just covering their bases. I imagine there's a few really out of spec chargers/cables out there that can fry stuff. I'm amazed Nintendo actually went through the trouble of specifying cable specifications rather than "use of unlicensed accessories will void your warranty and should not be used."

Though there is weirdness to these ports. I have 2 switches. At one time I could freely interchange the switches between the two docks without issue. Recently I discovered if I put Switch #2 into dock #1, any jarring of the console makes it lose its HDMI connection....it has to sit in it perfectly still. Yet putting each into its own respective dock is fine. Meanwhile Switch #1 I use with an Anker USB-C charging cable all the time, and #2 has only been connected to it a few times (same cable.) How did Switch #1 and Dock #1 happen to adapt to each other perfectly, where the connector on Switch #2 doesn't mate perfectly with Dock #1 anymore (it works, but if I bump the table or something it might flicker out a moment), but is totally fine in dock #2?

Weird stuff happens with connectors connectors I suppose, it's not inconceivable that some of them are behaving oddly. Then again I have mine on a 3rd party cable/charger (USB-C/UCB-C for like 200 hours a year....... And that's the one that's still behaving best and both operate mostly fine (#2 works fine in its own supplied dock after all.)

@NEStalgia Dude that is super weird. I can't make any sense of that. I only have 1 Switch, but 2 docks (original one sits in a case so I don't need to undo anything when I go to friends houses). Haven't had any issues. Its never in a place that gets bumped though. However, when changing a cartridge, the switch rocks down towards the right (makes sense since it balancing and the divot on the back has clearence). Still never noticed anything funny with the HDMI. Have you tried a different cable?

Unrelated: how did you deal with saves before NSO? Or is one a kids system?

@Trajan Technically it's not anything faulty. Each one of them in their own dock, both are rock solid. But put #2 on dock #1 and if I just bump the table, or just apply pressure to either end of it and it'll lose it's dock connection. That didn't happen when it was new so something "shifted" either on the dock or the console with the pins or housing. But it's still not "broken" since each in its own dock behaves perfectly normally even if I rock it. It does show each one has it's own temperament though And that it must subtly change in time while on its own dock. It's not the cable, the dock light also goes out when it loses connection it's definitely the dock connector that doesn't mate fully when moved (but does in its own dock, so the connector isn't damaged. And the dock connector isn't damaged since the other one is fine in it.) Just...unique personalities?

Heh, the saves involved being very very (im)patient waiting for NSO Both Switchs are mine, I wanted to use it like I did 3DS, where a "main" game like an RPG is always running/loaded in the main unit and a variety of lesser games, or post game content etc can be played on the go in the other one. But I knew I'd have to wait for NSO for that to work, so that was a long 1.5 years! I had to pick which machine to play which games on and leave them there. And digital....shudder. Of course I still have that problem with Dark Souls and Splatoon which encourages me to play something else more often

@NEStalgia Yeah man that's really weird. Mine lives in dock #2 mostly these days and the original dock is the travel dock. No issues.

Wow that must have been a pain having game dedicated consoles.

@Trajan It was. It only worked because I "knew" cloud saves were coming. But when I got the machine I thought cloud saves were coming in Spring 2017, not Fall 2018.

Of course thanks to Dark Souls and Splatoon I can relive the magic!

Same problem in Hong Kong, burnt out while playing Mario tennis on tv lol. Took it to official repair they said they would charge me like half of what the switch costs to repair. Under warranty too. Why do they even bother offering it? Never buying another nintendo products again. I bought the switch due to nastolgia anyway, their best games are their old games.

FYI, if you haven't been online lately you can go to any site and find anything to support your claims of damage. So unless there is a verified independent site that documents all the problems without bias this claim isn't holding water.

Well if you left it sit in the dock for a complete year and didn't remove would it do the same is the question. And if not then that leads to only one other way the damage could occur.

This is the very kinda response you won't get help when saying your first line.

No one one here can tell what one warranty is and if you didn't contact Nintendo support before taking somewhere else then it's not their problem.

You forgot to look closer at home to the cause of the damage.

I find this a bad story you bought for your son and it's 6 days past warranty something is clearly wrong here. Sounds like user caused problem not a hardware issue here. Nothing is adding up here.

No one on here knows even if it was under warranty or used Switch. People need to stop making false claims when it is user damaged regardless of the user's age. I had mine since March 2017 on two different Docks and all those times work fine and I even used a AC adapter USBC to charge and play on it and it works fine. And my nieces and nephews had their hands on it as well and I even dropped my Switch and it still works. Alot comes down the user and how they care for the Switch.