Well I've never heard of any company announcing changes to its service fee. Normally you just find out when you ring them up and nearly have a heart attack upon hearing the price.

Do Sony actually repair and return the console you send in or just send out a reconditioned unit?

Hmm... my guess is that Sony is trying to remove the BC PS3s from the system. Once they get enough of the systems out of the system, they can then start to work on PS2 software emulation for PSN downloads. Or, in a sense, make you buy games that you already own. It seems to be the big thing for downloads this gen...

Oh, that's just fantastic. Beautiful timing for my PS3 to crap out on me. But, I'd still rather pay the repair fee over $299 for a new slim and then $50 for a used PS2, so I can continue playing my PS2 games.

Or since my warranty is gone and I know the problem, maybe I'll try my luck at fixing it myself.

Sounds like they are trying to get the fat over heating launch PS3 off the streets, they continue to fail after repairs so this is a smart move.

Sony should make it so you can transfer the HDD from a dead PS3 to a new PS3 without losing all your data, this will make the whole idea of sending out refurbished systems a lot easier for the consumer that have hundreds of hours on the bricked PS3.

They need to make it a lot easier for people to retain their data if they have to get a new system.

That would open up a lot of security loopholes.  Its easy to backup the HDD to an external drive and most things can be redownloaded/installed as needed.  It would be nice to have savegames on a cloud though, that would not take up much space.

The price rise is due to 3 things

1) SONY is no longer manufacturing the fat PS3's, so they cost more to repair
2) SONY losses money on each PS3 they repair, and want to minimize this
3) SONY is aiming for profitability but cutting losses wherever possible

When my PS3s drive broke down last feb it was going to cost me 150 to fix. But luckly they were nice and sent the cheque back to me in the box with my ps3! free repair! and it was like 2 months out of warranty. I love sony now because of that :)

I would think you would only find out in the case your PS3 broke, prices change all the time with out an announcement, I know 30 plus people playing on PS3 because of the Military, only ! of those people ever had a problem and it was over 2 years old and Sony fixed it for free for him, so I have not had my PS3 die yet thank god, but the few times I spoke to Sony when I had questions I have to say there very good, no problems , very professional, and they knew there stuff, much better experience then I have had with other companies when there product had failed. Buy Im sure everyone has different experiences, depends on the employee IM sure.

My PS3 never broke so this isn't a problem.

how Dare Sony Build A High quality Console that Rarely Breaks and then raise repair cost that you will most likely never need