PeteGould
lvl.4
United States
Offline
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I completely agree. I wasn't suggesting otherwise - merely that by designating the Inspire as "not user serviceable" DJI decided to NOT make replacement parts, manuals, technical specifications, exploded diagrams, repair procedures, etc., etc., available to the customer base. While some extremely advanced technical types could perform repairs in spite of that, it's a much smaller number than could do the work with proper documentation and a direct source of OEM parts. Heck - I design and build TV production facilities. I've been servicing equipment since I started building Heathkit television sets from kits in 1974. But I'm used to proper documentation and parts being available.
The other thing that goes hand in glove with this "not user serviceable" designation is an approach to building it that is much less repair-friendly than a UAS that is sold as a kit.
This all took me by surprise as well. When we preordered our Inspire I also preordered replacement motors so we would have them in stock (you may remember, but more recent purchasers may not know, that replacement motors were part of the original announced stock of available parts for the Inspire before it started shipping). When we received our Inspire the motors were still on back order. Then we were notified by the dealer that DJI was withdrawing those motors from the market but they assumed there would be an upgraded replacement soon. THEN after having taken delivery and started flying (i.e. the product was no longer returnable) we learned what everyone now knows: that as simple a thing as a motor replacement requires paying (and waiting!) to ship from the greater New York area all the way to LA, followed by the interminable repair cycle, and that there appears to be no plan to ever change that.
And I who always buy everything via Amazon.com had made an exception and bought through a large dealer within driving distance - a dealer with a substantial DJI-authorized repair business - so if something went wrong that was beyond our in-house repair abilities we could DRIVE (not ship) the aircraft to be fixed and hopefully keep the repair to no more than a few days. You can see how THAT turned out.
To be honest, if we had learned about the Inspire AFTER it was on the market, with everything that we know now, we probably would have looked elsewhere. There is too much anti-customer behavior by this manufacturer to make us comfortable doing business with them. And that's sad, because their technology is clearly groundbreaking. It's just that the founder appears to be ALL about the technology (i.e. a hobbiest himself whose fun hobby happens to have made him a billionaire) rather than having any sense of responsibility to a customer base. A very sad state of affairs, to be sure. |
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