sending in PSP for repair

So.... I just finished boxing up
my PSP Slim to ship it out tomorrow to get it serviced.

I bought my Darth Vader white PSP Slim the day it came out, Oct.9, 2007. I was pretty amazed how light & good it felt over my old one.

But since early this year, I've been having this problem with the UMD drive; when I have a disc in but not playing, the drive would start up
randomly, even though I was doing other things like watching video or listening to music off of the memory stick. Basically the drive was "resetting", it's thinking that the drive door is being opened and a new UMD is put inside, so it starts up again... at random.

This seems like it might be a minor inconvenience, but it does it while I'm playing a game. So what happens is that the grey "Do you want to quit the game?" screen will pop up in the middle of playing, at random.

I taped a snippet of it, this is my PSP:





It's been getting worse & worse, and now it basically happens almost all the time.

I finally broke down & called Sony last week about it. The 1 year warranty covers Canada, but it's not the same program as in the U.S. In the U.S., if you need to send in your PSP I think Sony sends out a mailing box for you to send it in, then they replace your PSP with a refurbished one. I assume they fix your PSP and send it to the next guy who sends in a broken PSP.

But in Canada, they have a 3rd party repair depot that fixes PSPs, and presumably sends the same one back to the owner. I have to pay to ship it to them, then they pay to ship it back to me. They don't send me no box! Oh well.

So I've tried to box it up as carefully as I could, I wrapped it up in layers & layers of packing paper, and tried to make sure nothing jiggles around in the box. I hope it arrives ok, I did write "fragile" on the box but knowing Canada Post, I'm sure they'll ignore that.

I took off my Invisible Shield screen protector. Since putting one on my first PSP, this has been my go-to brand of screen protector. They have a lifetime replacement policy, you send back the old one & they apparently send you a new one. But I've never had reason to take off the IS on my old PSP, so I wasn't sure how it was going to go. It went pretty well. It's like a thick sticker, I was surprised how securely it stuck to the screen as I peeled it back. There was no residue left on the screen either, which many people have concerns about. So I'll have to mail that back to them eventually.

I also included a CD-R with the above video, and gave them the YouTube link if they need to see what the problem is (in addition to me telling them in the letter)

The turnaround is supposed to be about 7 business days... so I figure at least 2 weeks. Man.
I really love my PSP. Like REALLY LOVE it. It's my favourite console, because it does so much more than gaming. I originally bought my first PSP in 2006 as an mp3 player primarily, with games being secondary. But I never realised how cool & multi-functional the PSP was, and I've used it almost every day since May 2006.


I hope they fix the problem & it comes back to me as good as new. Worried.......



later
don