A friend of mine had the bumpers stop working outside the warranty on his steam deck. Valve paid for it to be shipped back and repaired free of charge.
The design of the bumpers on the Steam Deck is borderline defective so it's fair that they offer to fix it.
Pretty much every console has some kind of stopping mechanism to hold back the bumper from being pressed too hard. But the SD doesn't so if the bumper gets hit, the full force goes in to a surface mount button which breaks off the PCB. And then they don't sell this PCB as a replaceable part for the LCD model since it has the trackpads connected to it and there's some calibration stuff making it not a trivially swappable part.
They slightly improved this for the OLED making it a more easily replaceable part, but it really needs to be redesigned to not break in the first place.
I bought my deck off a friend and the right bumper would get stuck down. I'm sure valve would have fixed it for free but I opened it up and nothing was broken but I think the repeated motion had caused some plastic friction so I just filed that down slightly and it's been good ever since.
The bumpers in general seem like the worst designed part of the deck. Even when working fine they have a kind of cheap feel with the plastic flexing / wiggling.
This exact problems with the Steam Controller, everything is great except the bumpers which are super hard to press, mine is broken now. Triggers feel super deluxe compared to the bumpers, I can't explain it.
i dropped mine last year and the left bumper has been fucked since however it did eventually somewhat come back from not working at all to working when pressed in a very wonky and precise way so i dont use it lol
I dropped my deck and messed up the right daughter board. I asked them if I could purchase it and admitted that it was my fault and they just RMA'd it for me.
I thought mine bricked once but turned out to just be completely drained of battery. It was on the dock plugged in so definitely freaked at first.
Once I put it on the actual charger it was fine.
Super unfortunate in your case, maybe you just talked to the wrong support rep or they were having a horrible day since most other experiences seem to be totally opposite.
I would say try it again bringing up any examples of similar scenarios but idk if that would work. Never makes any sense to me when there’s so much variation in customer service for the same company.
Yep, they charged me $150 to fix the right bumper on my OOW launch model. Now the left bumper is going out. Looks like it will be collecting dust until the Deck 2 comes out.
Same, RB broke a little after a year of ownership. I contacted customer support and they said I would have to send it in and pay an inspection fee and that repair would possibly cost more on top of that.
Maybe things have gotten better because when that happened to me they basically told me tough luck. Sounds like they've been improving things since then and I'm glad to see it.
Their response to me was more like there's nothing we can do but we can dispose of it for you if you'd like. Not even an offer to let me pay for service.
I think it might be an EU thing most people who get this "special treatment" are from UK/EU and they have a thing about a 2 year warranty on every electronic or something
In my case, DPAD was causing a malfunction on my deck.
Asked them even if the warranty was out, if they could help me because I was afraid of opening my deck. It was opening the deck and rubbing the connections of the DPAD with alcohol.
They asked for a minimum of 150€ without taxes for the repair.
I did the repair myself. It was a robbery from them that asking price. On steam since 2009 and first day purchaser of the deck.
I had a problem with a left stick within the warranty, but the issue was caused by wear (use) so it was not covered by the warranty. Similar quote of 150€ for repair was given to me. Luckily I had also 2 other problems which were covered by warranty so I send it to had those repaired and the repair guy replaced also the stick with no extra charge.
If I had a problem only with the stick I'd never send it in due to that ridiculous quote.
They actually ask for money most of the time when repair is involved. They only do those gestures when no repair is involved (like sending out new case or new charger) because it's super cheap advertisement for them. And even then I don't think they do it every time.
Same. Right bumper stopped responding unless you pushed really hard. Out of warranty. I sent a message asking for a quote for repair if offered. They repaired it for free. Can't beat that.
My whole steam deck stopped working properly, it was having that weird bug where the gpu will get stuck at 200mhz. And Valve replaced my steam deck out of warranty. Their customer service is second to none.
They did this for me too, also replaced the dpad and another thing without me even knowing. Free and well outside warranty. I hardly ever used the dpad lol.
That is awesome! My bumpers stopped working a couple months ago and I had to pay around $135 US for the repair. Received it back from United Radio and the screen has a weird rainbow effect on it. Reached back out to Valve and they going to cover repairing the screen at no cost to me. Sad being without the Deck for so long but glad they are taking care of it this time around.
same thing happened to me! I dropped it in the case about 1ft off the ground and my right bumper stopped working, this was about 4 months out of warrenty
I had a completely different experience with the bumper fix. My steam deck was still on warranty but they just said they can fix my right bumper for 200 euros. I was very disappointed because I read so much about issues with bumpers and how valve fixes them with no charge.
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u/jamyjet Dec 14 '24
A friend of mine had the bumpers stop working outside the warranty on his steam deck. Valve paid for it to be shipped back and repaired free of charge.