A drifting DualSense costs £19 to fix on one stick, £24 for both, £34 to replace both sticks with Hall effect modules, or £39 for TMR. Those are my prices, they're on the page, and nothing is added afterwards.
That's unusual. Most UK repairers who fix controllers won't publish a figure at all — you send an enquiry and wait for a quote. The ones who do publish tend to sit between £35 and £60 for a standard stick replacement, and £50 to £60 for a Hall effect upgrade, usually with a three or six month warranty attached.
What you're actually paying for
Drift is wear inside the analogue stick module. The stick works by sweeping a contact across a resistive track — a potentiometer — and that track wears down with use. Once it's worn, the controller reads movement when the stick is sitting still. No amount of cleaning or recalibration fixes a worn track, because the fault is physical.
The repair means desoldering the old module from the board, cleaning the pads, fitting a new one and calibrating it. It's fiddly work on a small four-layer board and it's easy to lift a pad if you're rushing, which is why it costs more than the £3 the module itself is worth.
Why one stick costs less than two
Most drifting pads only drift on one stick, usually the left, because that's the one that takes the abuse in most games. If only one side is wandering, there's no reason to pay to replace the other.
Book the single-stick repair at £19 if you know which one it is. If both are going, £24 covers the pair. If you're not sure, send it in and I'll tell you — I'd rather do the £19 job than sell you the £24 one you didn't need.
The Hall effect option at £34
A standard repair puts the controller back how it was, with new potentiometer sticks that will eventually wear the same way. A Hall effect upgrade replaces them with contactless magnetic sensors. Nothing physically touches, so there's no contact track to wear down — the usual cause of drift.
It's £34 and it covers both sticks — the modules are fitted as a matched pair, so there's no single-stick version. The TMR upgrade is £39 and works the same way, with a finer sensor and lower battery draw. If you've already had a pad repaired once and it's drifted again, that's the one to get. There's more on the choice in Hall effect vs standard sticks.
What about a new controller?
A new DualSense is around £60. So the £19 repair is roughly a third of the price, and even the Hall effect upgrade comes in well under — and leaves you with a pad that's better than a new one, because a new one has the same wearing sticks that failed the first time.
The detail is in repair or replace, but the short version is that replacing a £60 controller because a £3 part wore out is the expensive way round.
What's included
Every price on this site covers parts, labour and tracked return postage. There's a 12-month warranty on the work, and the no-fix-no-fee promise — if I can't fix it, you don't pay for the repair and I refund what you paid less £4.99 return postage.
If you're weighing this against finding someone local, here's the honest comparison.
Before you book
If the drift only started recently, it's worth ruling out the free fixes first — recalibration and a clean occasionally sort a pad that's picked up grit rather than worn out. What to try first walks through them and, more usefully, tells you when they won't work.
If you've already tried and it's still drifting, the stick is worn. Book the repair and post it in.
