The squeaky wheel —

Fourth time’s the charm: Nintendo eases Wii U transfer issue with store credit

Apparently, you just have to keep harassing customer service.

Regular Ars readers will remember how Nintendo's bafflingly obtuse DRM system forced me to pay $60 to move $400 worth of previously purchased Wii Virtual Console games to my new Wii U. Apparently I should have held out longer, because at least one user is reporting Nintendo eventually accommodated him more when fixing a similar issue.

Last month, Ryan, one host of the Nintendo Fun Club Podcast, chronicled his experience with Error Code 200101, a recurring issue preventing him from transferring $570 worth of Virtual Console purchases from the Wii to the Wii U. Three calls to Nintendo customer support throughout the course of a week seemed to be getting him no closer to having his problem fixed. The whole scenario had Ryan running up against the same $85 Wii "repair" wall I encountered.

Then something surprising happened. As Ryan notes in a follow-up post, his fourth call to Nintendo support left him with a $620 account credit in the Wii Shop Channel—including a $50 bonus for "the inconvenience." Nintendo could apparently also remotely delete the licenses for the games purchased on his Wii system, allowing him to easily repurchase the games he lost. This was especially interesting to me, because the Nintendo customer service rep I talked to told me in no uncertain terms such license deletion was impossible.

It might seem exceedingly generous of Nintendo to spend $620 to keep a disgruntled customer happy, but when you think about it, that's not really money out of the company's pocket. Nintendo had already received the money for those purchases when Ryan made them on the Wii, and it doesn't really cost Nintendo anything to create another digital copy of the games Ryan will be downloading. At worst, the $50 "bonus" could be seen as a cut out of the money Ryan might have spent on future Virtual Console content. That's it.

In any case, this kind of replacement shouldn't require haranguing Nintendo customer support with multiple calls. This should be the default position once Nintendo confirms technical issues hold previous purchases hostage. Unfortunately, we are still hearing reports of other Wii U owners being forced to pay for repairs in order to move their games over.

Nintendo has yet to respond to numerous requests for comment from Ars about its Virtual Console DRM scheme and issues with transferring games between systems.

Channel Ars Technica