*********Beware if buying a DJI Drone**********

  

  

DJI Malfuction Report/ No Product Support

  

Horrible Customer Service

  

BEWARE of Product Support and Warranty.. They Do NOT HELP YOU!

  

First off, I purchased the DJI Phantom 4 on May 11th, 2017. I did a lot of research on the Drone’s and I found this one to be the best out there on the market. Well at least I thought it was.  I endorsed this product because I found on my research that this was the best product out for Drones, well at least so I thought. I had 2 of my co-workers and also a friend buy the Phantom Drone. I had other people that were going to buy it also, but I have definitely spread the word. And I am spreading the word on DJI customer Care and Product Support **DO NOT PURCHASE THEIR DRONE**.

  

Read carefully and my name is Kevin @ 951-201-6798. More information on how the customer service and customer care of product treated me. I will not endorse this product anymore.

  

DJI reports that one of the main features there drone has is called “Return to Home”. They state that this is an excellent feature to have and I totally agree that it is. (If it worked properly)

  

I reported a malfunction of my Phantom 4 Drone on June 23rd, 2017.  The Drone disconnected in midflight and disappeared.  There is a feature on the drone that if this happens it supposed to fly back home or if I initiate the feature it should fly back home, well neither one happened as it was designed to do. I received an email back stating to send a full report on what happened and could I upload the data of the flight. Immediately I uploaded and sent all important information that they requested. Again I received an email thanking me for my prompt response and I should hear back from them 3 to 5 days. I received no phone call or email within the stated time frame. I called them back on July 4th and they were open and said that they would get back to me immediately. NO call or email, so I called back again on July 7th and spoke with a manager. Again they said within a few days I would have an answer. Well at this point, time is going by and I have again sent them all the information they needed. ON July 14th my wife called and spoke with a supervisor and he stated that he would escalate the matter and I should hear back from them in 48 hours. NO CALL or EMAIL. My wife called again on July 21st, 2017 and again spoke with a supervisor and he stated that within 24 to 48 hours because it is now being escalated again. This is ridiculous. After another phone call on July 25th, 2017. I get a response, finally. I want to resolve this issue and move on and get the right answers and product support. The customer service is so bad.  One of the reasons they state is everything has to go through China and they can’t change anything. BUT we have a corporate office here in the US> Why in the world would we do business with someone or another Country and can’t resolve the issues with our own customer base. This is a real and serious issue I have.

  

Moving on, their response was, now get this. WE don’t know what happened to your drone. This is after they get all the uploads and information. They stated that after it lost the signal they can’t figure out what happened. Well your drone clearly states that it has return home. The return Home was activated and it also states that It supposed to return home automatically after 3 sec’s of disconnect. Then where is my Drone? Again, they do not and cannot justify why it did not come back home. This is clearly a malfunction of this drone and they do not want to admit it. They are unable to determine what happened and cannot find any reason or why the drone did not return home. All I want is my drone back or replace it.  This is obviously a defect, the drone disconnected and it did not return home automatically as it should have nor did it return home after I initiated the request manually.  They should stand behind their product and their warranty (which I paid a great amount for).  

  

Also note, this is where I am totally insulted, they claim that they are very sorry for my unpleasant experience with their service and product. What in the heck does that mean?

  

They continue to offer me a 30% coupon to get another drone with partial parts. And they insult me further by saying it is only valid for a month.  I declined their offer.  They should stand behind their product and replace it (not partially) and honor the expensive Warranty I purchased directly from them!

  

Hey DJI if you are truly sorry for my unpleasant experience with your product that failed to meet your own requirements. REPLACE MY DRONE, that’s all I ask of you.

  

Once again, after it disconnected and disappeared. I went on the DJI go 4 app. It has Flight Record and Find my Drone. I went to both of these to try to get an idea of what happened or even where the drone was. Both applications show me a different location of the Drone. I had no idea where to start looking. I posted signs everywhere. I even posted it on neighborhood watch and offered a reward.

  

After all is said and done after 43 Days!!! I have no Drone and the money for the purchase of the Drone and the Warranty was as if it was stolen from me.  I want to make sure this does not happen to anyone else, so be very careful if you purchase a Drone from DJI.  

  

Again if you have any questions call Kevin 951-201-6798!

  

  

Your warning probably comes too late here, 99% of readers will  have one already.
Unfortunately DJI don't usually give much detail as to what may have gone wrong.

RTH by its nature is not failsafe, and there can be a few reasons it did not work as you intended it too.

If you'd like some of the experienced pilots here to have a look at your flight logs, and perhaps shed some light on what went wrong then post your flight details to http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/, when completed post a link to this thread.

Better take the 30% and move on. Save your fingers and voice.......it wont get any better

Aardvark Posted at 2017-8-8 13:00
Your warning probably comes too late here, 99% of readers will  have one already.
Unfortunately DJI don't usually give much detail as to what may have gone wrong.

Ref: return to home.............could this have happened. Before take-off, new home point wasn't updated, when signal was lost the bird took flight to the last homepoint that was recorded. That is called pilot error. I'm not saying that's what happened, but..............

Imovetheearth Posted at 2017-8-8 13:31
Ref: return to home.............could this have happened. Before take-off, new home point wasn't updated, when signal was lost the bird took flight to the last homepoint that was recorded. That is called pilot error. I'm not saying that's what happened, but..............

The aircraft does not remember the previous home point.

Recontaz ... DJI do make the best off-the-shelf drones but they aren't very good at communicating with users about incident causes.
But that's not as big a deal as you might think because the Go app has a black box flight recorder built-in and users themselves can use that to investigate flight incidents like yours and learn from the experience and sometimes even find lost Phantoms.

Here's a recent case like yours of a non-RTH mystery solved:  http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=108019

Here's a recent case of a lost Phantom found:  http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=108137

There are a number of potential and common causes of incidents like yours.
If you want to solve the mystery your best chance is to:
Go to http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
Follow the instructions to upload your flight record.
Come back and post a link to the report it provides ,

Imovetheearth Posted at 2017-8-8 13:31
Ref: return to home.............could this have happened. Before take-off, new home point wasn't updated, when signal was lost the bird took flight to the last homepoint that was recorded. That is called pilot error. I'm not saying that's what happened, but..............

With my Phantoms, the setting of Home Point happens after different periods of time - rarely immediately. It depends on how long it takes to lock on to the required number of GPS satellites. I never take off until such time as Home Point is reported as set.

So, another possibility is that the P4 didn't set a home point until sometime in flight i.e. somewhere along its flight path. If this can happen (I've never tested this) then perhaps it Did return to a point, just not where it actually took off. Also, it needs a good GPS lock to know where Home Point is - perhaps it lost GPS contact? And finally, you set a height for RTH altitude as collision avoidance is disabled. That altitude is relative to where you took off, and if the area has many obstables the P4 may have hit one of them.

Again, posting the flight log as detailed above, would help. Otherwise, have you also tried 'Find my drone' in the GO app? [edit: I note you said you looked at it]

I think the clue might be in this bit

"This is obviously a defect, the drone disconnected and it did not return home automatically as it should have nor did it return home after I initiated the request manually. "

A cancelled RTH perhaps ? Pure speculation of course without the flight records.

Sorry for the inconvenience and unpleasant experience first. And I have checked the case status, the flight record interrupted suddenly and no more evidence to show the exact reason. Therefore, the conclusion was unknown, and our colleagues had offered the corresponding solution according to DJI's policy. We apologize if this bothers you and please believe that we do not have any intention to offend you.

Again, I have forwarded this to the management to check whether there is better solution. I will keep you post.

Imovetheearth Posted at 2017-8-8 13:31
Ref: return to home.............could this have happened. Before take-off, new home point wasn't updated, when signal was lost the bird took flight to the last homepoint that was recorded. That is called pilot error. I'm not saying that's what happened, but..............

Home point was initiated and it locked and said it before I took off.  Also again I uploaded the data and they said it disconnected and they don't know what happened. Read their post also.

Hello everyone, All keep saying that was the home point initiated. Yes it was and it stated that before it took off. Also I did upload all of the information to DJI. THey said that it shows disconnected and from there they don't know what happened. Disconnected and don't know what happened. They have the flight logs and still can't tell me anything. All they can say it disconnected and they can't tell me anything. Also they even emailed me and said in the flight records that they looked at, there was nothing to cause a accident. Nothing was high enough. This is what they said in a email to me..

Recontaz Posted at 2017-8-9 12:29
Hello everyone, All keep saying that was the home point initiated. Yes it was and it stated that before it took off. Also I did upload all of the information to DJI. THey said that it shows disconnected and from there they don't know what happened. Disconnected and don't know what happened. They have the flight logs and still can't tell me anything. All they can say it disconnected and they can't tell me anything. Also they even emailed me and said in the flight records that they looked at, there was nothing to cause a accident. Nothing was high enough. This is what they said in a email to me..

If you want to get a second opinion then perhaps some of the more experienced pilots on the forum might at least be able to provide pointers as to what may have gone wrong and how it might have be avoided.

Aardvark Posted at 2017-8-8 13:00
Your warning probably comes too late here, 99% of readers will  have one already.
Unfortunately DJI don't usually give much detail as to what may have gone wrong.

Voila, time to pay EU fines like GoPro

I sent a drone off because the controller locked up mid flight and crashed. They said to send the drone in with the controller and battery so they could look at everything. Well a month later and all I was getting was excuses on the delay. They even told me to send them the flight records after I explained to them multiple times or tried to explain to them they had the drone and controller so how could I get the records off. Finally after that hurdle they sent me a repaired drone back, but of course kept the battery and said it was never shipped to them. I used a second battery I bought so I could power it on. Well the camera doesn’t half way work, it makes a constant humming sound, controller says the sensors doesn’t work along with a list of other error messages. Who would ship that back to a customer!! Dealing with this company is like dealing with a bunch of children!! I’ve been told three times during this process that a manager would call me only to call back later wanting to know where the call was, then to be told they sent me an email (I never received) or left a voicemail (which again never happened)...it’s unreal what this company puts customers through. At this point I just want my money back. I cant deal with a company that constantly lies to customers and doesn’t support the terrible product they put out. I wish I would have listened to others and bought anything but a DJI product. I will do all I can to inform others online not to make the same mistake I did and buy from this company

Recontaz Posted at 2017-8-9 12:29
Hello everyone, All keep saying that was the home point initiated. Yes it was and it stated that before it took off. Also I did upload all of the information to DJI. THey said that it shows disconnected and from there they don't know what happened. Disconnected and don't know what happened. They have the flight logs and still can't tell me anything. All they can say it disconnected and they can't tell me anything. Also they even emailed me and said in the flight records that they looked at, there was nothing to cause a accident. Nothing was high enough. This is what they said in a email to me..

Is it possible that on disconnect it hovered in place or landed in place having these been set in the settings and not RTH, please bear in mind that either hover or landing IS the default setting on one of the app versions, i belive its 4.1.15 or 4.1.18, i know this because 1, it happened to me and folks swore blind RTH was default, 2, the other day when i was trying different app versions (other reasons) i was going through the settings and on disconnect the default had changed to i think  hover but could have been landing, cant remember which one but it most deffo was not RTH

Anyhoo Recontaz, do as Labroides suggested in reply #7 and upload the flight data, he will then perhaps be able to give you more of an understanding as to what happened and maybe give you an idea as to where to look for it.......

Bashy Posted at 2018-2-5 22:21
Is it possible that on disconnect it hovered in place or landed in place having these been set in the settings and not RTH, please bear in mind that either hover or landing IS the default setting on one of the app versions, i belive its 4.1.15 or 4.1.18, i know this because 1, it happened to me and folks swore blind RTH was default, 2, the other day when i was trying different app versions (other reasons) i was going through the settings and on disconnect the default had changed to i think  hover but could have been landing, cant remember which one but it most deffo was not RTH

Anyhoo Recontaz, do as Labroides suggested in reply #7 and upload the flight data, he will then perhaps be able to give you more of an understanding as to what happened and maybe give you an idea as to where to look for it.......

It might be a bit corroded by now ;-)