The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and its members have lodged a complaint against Nintendo with the European Commission and national consumer protection authorities for systematic problems with the functionality of the Nintendo Switch console, BEUC announced on Wednesday 27 January.
The initiative follows some 25,000 complaints from consumers across Europe (France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece and Norway) who were dissatisfied with a recurring technical problem with the Nintendo Switch controllers that made the console unusable.
According to reports, in 88% of cases the game controllers broke during the first two years of use.
“BEUC and its members are calling for a Europe-wide investigation on this issue. We ask the European Commission to call on national authorities to investigate Nintendo’s practices in their countries, to initiate coordinated action to enforce the law and to publish a unified position”, BEUC wrote in a letter to the Commission on Wednesday.
BEUC and its members want Nintendo to be required to remedy the premature failure of its product as a matter of urgency. Until then, defective game controllers should be repaired free of charge and consumers should be properly informed about the limited lifetime of this product. Since its arrival on the market, the console has sold more than 68 million units worldwide, many of which are in Europe.
“Nintendo must now find appropriate solutions for the thousands of consumers affected by this problem. It is high time that companies stopped putting products on the market that break prematurely. The creation of unnecessary e-waste is totally contrary to the objectives of the European Green Deal”, says BEUC Director General Monique Goyens.
Read the letter to the Commission: https://bit.ly/3abDwWO (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)