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Let me give some background… I Purchased my Phantom 4 in early December 2016. In Late March 2017 the unit crashed. I was in mid-flight and the drone lost power and fell to the ground. I opened a support case with DJI and sent the unit in for repair. I received a notification that DJI received my drone on 4/3.
On 4/12 I got the invoice from them. The invoice stated “ultrasonic sensor obstruction” “unit shut off motors believing it was on the ground, user error.”.
This diagnosis kicked off a very time intensive process for me to get some answers about why this was considered “user error”. The DJI side of the story is that my drone thought it was on the ground so it shut off, they claim the reason it thought it was on the ground was because I had installed a gimbal guard. At the time I did not know what a gimbal guard was and when I questioned the customer support representative about it he told me- and I quote, “you were flying with the clear plastic gimbal protector that shipped with the unit in place”. This conversation was with a supervisor. For the record I was NOT flying with any gimbal guard in place, nor was the gimbal lock that shipped with the unit in place during flight as was suggested by support.
The support supervisor that I was speaking with went back and forth with another department and finally opened a case via the DJI Zendesk ticketing system. The representative informed me that my case would be reviewed and that he would get back to me, via email through the ticketing system, to update me on status. Specifically he informed me that data would be provided to substantiate the claim that a gimbal guard was attached to the system.
After five days I have no update so I reached out to DJI to get a status. The following day, six days from my promise of a max 48 hour turn around on communication, I get an updated status that is almost the exact same wording used in the initial determination, no additional details were provided to me.
Based on this I replied back to DJI with several points of contention to their claim of user error. First and foremost I asked why the unit all of a sudden, after six min of flight, decided it was on the ground. This communication was on 4/27.
On 5/2 I again reached out to DJI to ask for an updated status on my case. Instead of a response my case was closed and listed with a status of “solved”. The same day I responded asking why the case was closed, I received no response.
Fast forward to 5/10. I received a “final notice” on my repair invoice. So I reached out to DJI yet again to try and understand what was going on with my case, this time over online chat because I didn’t have one hour plus to be on the phone with them. The representative told me that he would file a dispute and that they would get back to me within the day.
On 5/17 and I don’t have any answers from DJI. So I reached out via chat to check again. The chat representative told me that he could submit an invoice dispute and that they would get back to me over email. I asked the rep if he could look at the last chat session that I had and see if anything had been done, he promptly informed me that he did not have access to previous conversations about my case. WHAT, your in support and you don’t have context on the issues I have been having nor access to my case history? So I pick up the phone and call in to DJI. 45 min pass and I finally get in touch with a support rep. The rep proceedes to tell me that my drone will be returned by the middle of next week in an un-repaired state. Yes, that’s right, a completely different answer than what I got from the chat session. Because of some of the history here I asked to be transferred to a supervisor. An additional Hour passes before I can talk with a supervisor.
The supervisor was friendly but also did not seem to have any information related to my case, in fact he started talking to me like I was calling in on an issue related to a Mavic. I steered him in the right direction and pointed him to the Zendesk case that I had opened with the previous supervisor. My questions were, 1. Why was my previous ticket closed & 2. What is the status of my drone? The supervisor could not give me any information about why the ticket was closed, other than to say that a specific representative closed the ticket so that he could communicate with me via his personal email. Apparently each DJI support rep has a personal email that follows the support.NA***@dji.com where the *** is replaced with numerals indicating that reps number. The rep did however let me know that he had scheduled a manager to call me back within 48 hours. I was also able to get this reps specific DJI email address so that I would be able to reach him directly if a manager did not call me back to discuss my case.
I received a call on 5/18 from the manager, unfortunately I was unable to take the call. The manager did leave a message and send an email as well. The content of each was the same, essentially just a rehash of the same thing the other reps have been telling me. DJI believes that user error caused the drone to detect that it was on the ground and consequently shut the unit off in midair. Additionally, this manager tells me, via voicemail, that my warranty is now void because I attached a gimbal guard. Again, I have never had a gimbal guard or any object for that matter attached to my drone.
I replied to the email that was sent asking the manager to please call me back to discuss. I have received no return call. This leaves me feeling like DJI is under the impression that attempting to call me once and leaving a message fulfills their commitment for my request to speak with a manager. Extremely frustrating. There is another post in this forum about a user with the same diagnosis from DJI, basically they are blaming the user for the unit falling out of the sky. I would speculate that there are others with the same issue that have not been vocal on the forum and have just sucked it up and paid to get their drone out of DJI jail. Throughout this process I have been racking my brain on why the unit would not use a combination of sensors for it to know if its on the ground or not. The software seems to be pretty smart in other ways so why such a basic thing is this type of problem I don’t know.
And here is the kicker, I don’t even have a valid link from DJI to see my invoice. I have mentioned this to literally every representative I have spoken with because the first thing they ask you is if you want to pay for the reapir. To this date I still don’t have a valid link to my invoice.
Friday (5/19) I received a notice indicating “Your Phantom 4 has been tested and will be shipped within two business days. “ I have no idea what this means. I have a manager teling me on Thursady (5/18) that its my fault then I get an automated message on Friday saying it’s been tested and will be shipped withing two business days. Just par for the course with DJI support.
Since I know the very next thing here is for a DJI forum member to ask for my case number ill go ahead and provide that. And since I have not had much luck on the extremely long phone calls with support ill ask the questions again. Whats going on with my unit? Has it been repaired and will be sent back in two days like the email I received says?
Case # CAS-528181-K8H8W5
The support process is madening, it's full of hour plus long phone calls, customer service representatives that appear to want to be helpfully but are not empowered to do anying, countless wait times of 24 to 48 hours, empty promises of followup, and in my case and at least one other on this forum with the same issue DJI is blaming the customer for something that is not their fault.
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