At the start of April I was operating my phantom 4 under a Pix4D preplanned flight. With the new higher capacity battery purchased the day before I was getting a great day of photos for later photogrammetry processing. On the last flight, while flying from waypoint to waypoint at 150 feet of altitude, it appeared as though the rotor broke (hard to say at that distance) but it resulted in the drone motor making an increaingly loud scream and the drone falling down and sideways at a very fast speed. This fall led the drone down and into a tree with it crashing down the remaining distance.
The drone had one arm sheared off, brand new battery destroyed, the gimbal arm broken, the landing leg cracked and other cracks in the shell as well as 2 motors filled with dirt and feeling broken when spun by hand. Obviously all rotors were destroyed as well and there were now many cosmetic flaws with less than 10 flight days and only soft landings prior. Could not get log data from drone as external connections were non operational.

April 5, 2017 Contact DJI for repair. Receive shipping lable for  .1 lbs. (not enough)
May 25, 2017 Finally resolve shipping lable issue after going back and forth trying to explain to DJI that their drone, controller, and box are not .1 lbs and I need at least 5+ lbs. Can finally send in drone.

June 10, 2017 DJI sends me quote for $286 and claims using Pix4D automatically voids my warranty as it's a 3rd party API. In addition, the drone recorded an impact and we were flying in an area with trees according to satellite imagery. The drone I purchased in December of 2016 doesn't have a warranty that says their fully support API in use by Pix4D and drone deploy voids warranty of mechanical failure. It didn't matter what I said or explained they're drones can crash and fall from the sky due to their defective parts and Pix4D and myself are to blame, not them. I guess they really like 3rd party APIs because it saves them a lot of money. Secondly, I know it had an impact, I watched it dive bomb sideways into a tree. There was no possibility with 3 rotors that I could have saved it. Third, yes it was flown over trees. But here in upstate New York at a park with 50-70 foot trees, occasionally one that 100 feet,  I think 150 feet offers Plenty of cushion to avoid trees.

After spending hours as well as 2 Months and 10 days DJi lets me know that they don't honor their defects if operated via Pix4D. I WROTE this into the description on Day 1 of the claim/repair request. In addition, the repair quote only includes the battery, the yaw arm and motor, 1 rotor motor, and two covers (one piece $6 and one piece $8). I have no idea if these covers were the actual shell but description and pricing would indicate otherwise and when asked specifically whether these were the shell with was cracked, split, and missing an arm the agents could not answer with anything other than they don't know but are sure I would receive an operational drone. When asked about the safety and reliability  I could expect after such a crash considering the SD card and USB weren't operational and the controller was no longer communicating when I had sent it in. They claimed it would be fine but I couldn't trust them  or risk paying for such horrendous service and putting something back in the air that could crash and cause injury or damage with so much evidence of neglect and unprofessional service. That besides trying to land a drone with one bad motor, one broken leg, a sheared off arm etc that wasn't indicted in the repair. I asked them if they could just at least be honest with me and tell me that they don't care about their customers or honor their products. I think a robot answered no. Finally I asked if they could just send it back with expedited shipping so I could figure out what to do. They agreed but it still took until June 30th to get my broken drone back.

Disassembled last night to inspect myself. It does need 2 motor replaced, not 1. It does need gimbal arm and motor as indicated. One capacitor is broken off from ESC, they didn't catch that. Needs upper and lower shell replaced. Needs one leg replaced.
To TOP off this whole debacle, the SD card for logging on the main board is TORN OFF. Gone. No SD card and the connector that it would go into has been ripped off with only pins remaining.
I can't even begin to explain how infuriating this has been and how much stress this has caused in addition to the time lost while waiting to do my masters research on this drone.

Main problem is 3rd party apps voids warranty if accident occurs while using them.  Period.

You may have been ahead to let them fix it for $286 for all the extra issues found by you later on.  Resubmitting may be higher now that you have been  into it and they find out.

They may have just replaced it with a refurb (Not my choice of plan.) without upping the estimate and you'd be in the air again.  I think the shell at retail price is some $65 alone and they get it for far less. The other parts may be more than $286 once done and still no assurance the thing will fly.  Too many have tried DIY approach and issues still remain.

With all you stated it needs it sounds like $286 would have been a bargain.   Live and learn.

I regret the trouble you’ve been inflicted and sincerely apologize for the unpleasant experience. However, any damage caused by reliability or compatibility issues when using unauthorized third-party parts will not be covered by warranty according to DJI After-Sales Service Policy, please read more policies via the link below: http://www.dji.com/service/policy We suggest to send in again for repair,local repair center will fix and make flight test with the drone with no problems and then ship back to you, please don't disassemble and repair by yourself, like 2# said, the cost may be higher. Please send in and our repair team will take care it.

DJI Mindy Posted at 2017-7-1 18:54
I regret the trouble you’ve been inflicted and sincerely apologize for the unpleasant experience. However, any damage caused by reliability or compatibility issues when using unauthorized third-party parts will not be covered by warranty according to DJI After-Sales Service Policy, please read more policies via the link below: http://www.dji.com/service/policy We suggest to send in again for repair,local repair center will fix and make flight test with the drone with no problems and then ship back to you, please don't disassemble and repair by yourself, like 2# said, the cost may be higher. Please send in and our repair team will take care it.

If flying unmanned drone is a sport, this policy is quite user friendly. Luckily DJI is not a sport equipment manufacturer. What is professional after-sale policy? Based on my experience, I am a pro cyclist, the money that I spend on cycling hobby is 20 time more than I spend on my Inspire 2, professional after-sale is the brand need to stand at the customer point of view when issues happened. Such as Trek and Ridley have lifetime warranty for my madrone 9.9 and my Noah Fast, even it was crash in the competition, when I was descending from the hill at 98km/h and the carbon frame was tear to pieces. When I call them said I was crash, they Just ask me 2 questions. 1) "Are you ok? Are you brending now? "2) "Please give me your serial number of the frame, we will call the official retailer bike store to offer a new bike for you, you just need to come to the store to do the bike fit. We hope you will perform well in the next stages."

I had a minor crash with my phantom 4. It was down to my inexperience. I got too close to a steel security fence which caused interference and the P4 went out of control so I had to pull a CSC. Fortunately I was covered by DJI Care. To be fair to DJI the were a few bits that weren't covered by warranty inc cosmetic shell damage and props but DJI replaced the whole lot. My P4 came back like brand new. I was somewhat surprised (and also very happy) given some of the stories I have read about poor DJI service. I'm just giving a different perspective and I hope you get your P4 sorted to your satisfaction.

Speed Weaponry Posted at 2017-7-1 22:25
If flying unmanned drone is a sport, this policy is quite user friendly. Luckily DJI is not a sport equipment manufacturer. What is professional after-sale policy? Based on my experience, I am a pro cyclist, the money that I spend on cycling hobby is 20 time more than I spend on my Inspire 2, professional after-sale is the brand need to stand at the customer point of view when issues happened. Such as Trek and Ridley have lifetime warranty for my madrone 9.9 and my Noah Fast, even it was crash in the competition, when I was descending from the hill at 98km/h and the carbon frame was tear to pieces. When I call them said I was crash, they Just ask me 2 questions. 1) "Are you ok? Are you brending now? "2) "Please give me your serial number of the frame, we will call the official retailer bike store to offer a new bike for you, you just need to come to the store to do the bike fit. We hope you will perform well in the next stages."

Thanks for your sharing, but the drone is different from the bike, we listen to all the feedback on social media and are working hard on improving our service,  will make all your experience with us better and better.

Speed Weaponry Posted at 2017-7-1 22:25
If flying unmanned drone is a sport, this policy is quite user friendly. Luckily DJI is not a sport equipment manufacturer. What is professional after-sale policy? Based on my experience, I am a pro cyclist, the money that I spend on cycling hobby is 20 time more than I spend on my Inspire 2, professional after-sale is the brand need to stand at the customer point of view when issues happened. Such as Trek and Ridley have lifetime warranty for my madrone 9.9 and my Noah Fast, even it was crash in the competition, when I was descending from the hill at 98km/h and the carbon frame was tear to pieces. When I call them said I was crash, they Just ask me 2 questions. 1) "Are you ok? Are you brending now? "2) "Please give me your serial number of the frame, we will call the official retailer bike store to offer a new bike for you, you just need to come to the store to do the bike fit. We hope you will perform well in the next stages."

That's bike sponsorship and they pretty much cover who they sponsor with their products.

If DJI were to sponsor some professional FPV racer, no doubt they give them another drone if crashed.  The guy who does the free-style helicopter stuff for some hobby helicopter outfit can crash a lot too and get a new copter, i.e. Alan Szabo below:

fansa84fe8a4 Posted at 2017-7-2 05:44
That's bike sponsorship and they pretty much cover who they sponsor with their products.

If DJI were to sponsor some professional FPV racer, no doubt they give them another drone if crashed.  The guy who does the free-style helicopter stuff for some hobby helicopter outfit can crash a lot too and get a new copter, i.e. Alan Szabo below:

No, they didn't sponsor me, this policy is for every customer. if anyone buy their frame and crash or damaged, they will replace it for them, that mean if you buy it and crash it, they will replace for you.

If they sponsor a pro cyclist, their frames are customise version, so they can't replace for it, the only thing that they can do is replace it with the market normal version. But normal they don't need to replace it, because they already produce at least 10 customise frames for them every season.

The brands like Trek, Ridley, Specialized......Unfortunately They only sponsor Tour de France cycling team or Giro d'Italia team.