My Phantom 3 Advanced was just a month old when the incident happened. I send the drone to China Repair Center after communicating with the DJI support. Obviously it's still under warranty and I'm expecting a smooth process in claiming the warranty but I'm shocked when I was emailed of the quote of all the cost to repair the damage. They just simply void my warranty for the reason that they can't get the flight data from the damaged drone. I have the flight log (please see the video below) uploaded to their server and that proves that the drone was in normal use according to the user manual. Please see the details of the crash below.
"The incident happened 34 seconds after the second take-off using the same battery with the first take-off. The first take-off was running as normal and it took 5m 30s flight time, travel distance was 1002.4m, maximum altitude was 154.9m and it only consumed 25% of the battery before we land the aircraft. The second take-off is the same place with the first having battery level of 75%. After climbing for some altitude to make sure it's above trees and houses, we fly straight to our target destination and making a full throttle on both joysticks. 34 seconds after the take-off with a distance of 249.3m and height of 58.8m, we clearly saw that the aircraft was suddenly fall straight from the sky with no total power on all motors together with a 'signal lost' showing in the app. The aircraft was never rotating neither flying in a different directions before it fall, it just fall straight from the sky like rock. If the drone was working normally there's no way I could crash it considering that altitude and our environment. We are flying in a rural area and no tall buildings around."
I found some threads here (http://forum.dji.com/thread-54630-2-1.html) with a very similar issue as mine. So I conclude that this is a known issue with their product. From this thread the user lost his drone in the ocean with no flight data to retrieve from the aircraft but with the help of DJI support from the US he will get a brand new drone as a replacement with free of charges from US Repair Center. I got some help from the same support guy and he was able to review my flight log and did some communication with China Repair Center but unfortunately they still insisted that it's not warranty. Since the support guy is in the US he is limited of the help he can extend. (I'm so thankful of this guy for all his help and effort)
What I don't understand is why my warranty is void but on the other hand in a different repair center it's a different story. Why two repair centers under the same company having different standard?
If I am going to pay the cost this time and got my drone back and the same thing happens, how many times would I pay to repair a faulty product without me doing anything wrong?
I am hoping someone from China Repair Center will read this thread and able to help me in my case and claim my warranty.
Sorry for your crash, Bryan. I've tried to sync and check your record according to your case (CAS-158803-Z5F0X6). Everything was normal as I could see in the flight record. But unfortunately your drone is seriously damaged and the flight data cannot be recovered. So it is impossible to analyze the data. I'll escalate this.
lvl.1
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