The left analog stick stopped working one day. I called Sony and was told that my Vita was out of warranty because it was about a year and a half old. The base warranty is only for one year, but for an extra $40, I could have bought an extra two years.
In order for Sony to fix the problem, they would charge me $129 + taxes + shipping. Currently a new PS Vita costs $199. The customer service rep commiserated with me, agreeing that it really wasn't worth my while to spend that kind of money to get it fixed, and that I was probably better off just buying a new one AND getting the extended warranty, which he would be happy to call back and sell me. I told him to call back in a week.
There are guides online showing exactly how to take apart your Vita. There are also Chinese websites willing to sell you Vita parts. I looked for reviews of the Chinese vendors and found the overall consensus was that if you got the correct part it would probably work fine, but you might get one that doesn't work, or you might get the wrong part in your package. If either of these things happened, you were probably SOL because the standard of customer service from them was to politely delay you until your funds cleared, then ignore you.
So I bought one off e-bay from someone in Minnesota.
Here's what happened:
Since I've put the video up I've had a number of comments asking me if the stick stopped working after some system update, implying that it was a software problem. It was not a software problem because when I replaced the stick, the new stick worked (spoilers!). If the new stick hadn't worked in the exact same way as the old stick, then I could see blaming it on some update, but that was not the case.
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