Though I have had to send a PS3 away (since the Blu-ray drive was dying... not reading some discs, particularly dual layer discs, making strange noises when loading games and etc...) for repairs.
That PS3 was under a 3 year product service plan so the repairs were free. For a heads up though they wipe the hard drive before they send it back... So before you send a system out for repairs be sure to back up all your data.
Some games won't let you back up data to your own USB so you have to get PS+ to back them up. There aren't too many games that lock save data down (that I'm aware of)... but be careful since even if you can copy data to USB that doesn't mean you can use it later.
Like for MW3... you can copy the data... but it won't let you use it on another console, or the console that comes back repaired since that also counts as a different console too, even if it goes onto your account and is connected to your PSN ID.