Hi! My son has been playing and loving AC. Unfortunately his switch appears to have an issue which would require us sending it in for repair, but Nintendo isn't taking repairs right now with everything going on. Based on everything I've read even if we buy a new switch, link his account (and we do have the Nintendo online subscription) it won't do anything. We can't even get onto the existing switch to try and put it on an SD card and transfer (which also doesn't seem like it would work). I've got a real upset and disappointed kid who's put a lot of time into his island and am open to any ideas people might have.

On a side note, now going through this, I'm sure the publisher and Nintendo have their reasons for building the game this way and with these restrictions, but it feels like they have gone so far to prevent some people from doing potentially bad things that people who have done everything right and want to play the right way are getting punished. It would be great if - especially during this time - they found a way to let people  address these issues - especially so kids which are already dealing with so much don't have one more disappointment.

Thank you!

Can you describe the problem with the switch? Your problem might be fixable on your own if it's something simple. If you buy the tools the switch is fairly simple to open up and work on and all the parts in it are modular and can be replaced. My Mate Vince on YouTube has numerous videos where he fixes switches. https://youtu.be/QvHfw_LI_sQ
also an instructional video on opening it up.

Also just chop off the last paragraph. We get it but it's not really the time or place to go off on the "cloud save" rant.

If you're not comfortable repairing the hardware yourself (which will void your warranty), when you are able to send it in for repair, it might be worth raising this issue with Nintendo when arranging it, just in case there's something that they can do about it - Animal Crossing is a first-party game, so hopefully they've got something figured out for dealing with this before the transfer/restore facility that they've talked about is made available at a later date.