As far as i know, when my wii went wrong, i couldn't sent it to Nintendo [i live in chile] and i called the distributor, and they wrote both Wii's numbers, wait 2-3 days without online and then i had my new Wii with all my games
The only shame is i lost all my save files T_T
But you could call Nintendo first and ask...maybe if its too high to repair you could buy another and do what i did

I would never trust someone to fix my console. I say buy a new one.

Why don't you call nintendo and tell them what happened? though if I were you, I'd leave out the slapping part.

 You won't trust the company who made the console?

mm I bought mine at launch and it's also started making a lot of noises when spinning disks. Hope it holds out a while longer but I have a lot of VC stuff also and will get a lot when Wiiware is launched.

If you decide to use Nintnedo or if you'd like to sherlock could you please post your impressions on the service you received including time waited, delivery etc cos I think i'd also be using this option.

Actually it's a 1 year and 3 month warranty as long as you register the Wii on nintendo.com. Nintendo is usually very good with their warranty issue's so I suggest you call them and ask for help (register your Wii on Nintendo.com if you haven't already) chances are they'll waive the fee.

On the bright side, if you Wii died eating your Zelda disc, I'm sure it died happy. If only I could have such a glorious send off.

I wonder if the Wii is developing a high failure rate. I have heard the same story a couple times lately. Both times the warranty had expired on the machine. Perhaps the system has a lemon half life? I should make it a point in the next few days to ensure that my Wii is still working. Well it should I haven't even used it a total of two hundred hours.

Anyway from what I understand once you buy a virtual title on the Wii. Nintendo retains a record of the purchase. You have the right to reinstall the games you have purchased at no additional cost. So you can delete any title you purchase, and if at a later date you want to play it again you just download the title again.

Your posts never fail to make me laugh - appropiate Avatar.

That's right but it's tied to the system which is no problem if you send it in to get repaired but what if you buy a new system?

 This is even more of an issue with Wii Ware launching soon, anyone know if you can just phone them and get them to swap over purchases from an old system to a new one if both are registered?