You really need to stop saying this without proof.  If these machines are having heat issues, they likely will not show up for a few months after a slow degradation.

Also, you have no idea if any were returned at "your" eb store.  You admitted you don't work there, you merely shop there frequently.  Systems could have been returned during the countless weekly hours you were not in the store.

Now I am not saying this is a sign of PS3 Slim overheating issues, but you also can not say with certainty that these machines are NOT overheating.  Only time will tell.

13% failure is better than the 360's 54% or whatever it was reported as recently!

but that is good to know

The only thing we do know is Sony is making the PS3 cheaper than ever and the fail rate has gone up. Good luck getting a 3 year warranty from them for common problems.

^^
We know no such thing. An anecdote on the internet = PS3 fail rate has gone up? Right, that sounds definitive.

All we know is 360 had an above average fail rate and that it 'may' still have an above average fail rate.

As for PS3 we know it's fail rate is above Wii but apparently within the acceptable range for electronics.

As for the slim we know nothing yet, despite the OP. Given it uses less power, etc. I see no reason for the fail rate to change, because while smaller it's using less juice and so far the evidence I've seen is it runs to roughly the same temperature at the heat exhaust.

where are these reports?

4/30 is a too small sample for statistical relevance, but nevertheless it's quite in line with PS3 Fat average faultiness, and a lot less faulty than XB360, but still quite faultier than Wii.
So some news that don't change very much the previous situation about this issue.

PS: Anyway, we can say that this confirms what almost we all already knew: big, well ventilated case and low power consumption components give better reliability. I built my last PC with this in mind, as mid range performance low power components were enough for me, and it ran fresh enough even during the worst days of this hot Summer.

rushed? the 45nm cell has been in production since feb '08.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/02/ibm-shrinks-cell-to-45nm-cheaper-ps3s-will-follow.ars

Today I was at my store and I asked about the other returned PS3's. As you know, there were 2 that were definitely listed as defective but 2 that we had not inspected. Upon inspected the other 2 models, we declared that it was not in fact defective...so really, only 2/30 consoles have failed so far. Well actually, it's more like 2/36 now...we sold quite a few PS3's this morning!

I work at another Best Buy where we sold all our 35 PS3 slims. All customers were satisfied and encountered no problems at all.