Hello

I crashed my Mini (tried to land it in the boot of my car - which went well untill the downward sensors kicked in and the Mini met with the inside of roof and then the ground - stupid on my part, I know) and sent it in for repair.

I have DJI Care Refresh but I was cetain that I would not need to use this - I would just pay for the repair, since it was minor damage:

• 1 prop (OK, I thought they might replace all)
• The rubber band/suspension that holds the Gimbal
  

I was shocked to learn the repair quote was €108 - including €30 for a Gimbal Axis Arm Module (it was a rubber band!!!) and €50 for a repair fee.

Naturally I am going to use the DJI Care Refresh on this - but am I the only one who thinks this is waaaay too steep for very minor damage?

To everyone: if you do not have DJI Care Refresh, be prepared to pay though the nose for also very minor damage.

if you have care refresh, what would be the purpose of not using it even for an expected tiny repair amount?  do you not get more than one bite at the apple?

You’re always going to have to pay hourly rate which is usually €60, so it costs for parts 58, not that steep, you also fail to say that shipping is free so probably saved 25 for that, I think you did alright, and I agree stupid on your part, ;+):::

I wanted to "save" the replacements for real damage, this was the very slightest.

I would guess the manufacturing price of the parts is less than €7 and this is the official repair centre. Anyway, I wrote this post just to let people know that even the smallest of damages will set you back quite a bit.

Shipping is on top of the quoted amount.

fjelsten Posted at 3-8 12:56
I wanted to "save" the replacements for real damage, this was the very slightest.

I would guess the manufacturing price of the parts is less than €7 and this is the official repair centre. Anyway, I wrote this post just to let people know that even the smallest of damages will set you back quite a bit.

I wonder how much it would take you to get out of bed in the morning. Labour is not cheap your drone most likely ended up in holland and Labour is your biggest cost .

108 EUR is plainly excessive. The gimbal rubber mount probably just needed to be re-seated and the props despite guides that tell you otherwise can be replaced singularly. There's no need to replace not even a pair (on the same engine) if they have the same specs... they do recommend to change them in batches for the end users, but I am quite affirmative repair service are skilled and experienced enough to go by the single prop, case by case. Time to complete the job w/ final testing: I'd say less than 30 minutes.

That's what most manufacturers in many commercial goods do: inflated labour cost to discourage 1st party repairs in favour of their additional paid warranty, in DJI's term their Care Refresh program.

Hi fjelsten, the labour cost is not just the repair step but the whole repair process including the receiving the package, damage assessment, repair, test and so on. If you still have any concern of the damage assessment of the drone, you may post the case number here so that we could check more details. Thank you.

Hello Everyone.

Crashed my Mavic Mini yestertday.  Feel so sorry. I literally saved for almost 6 months to buy this and it crashed within 20 days of purchase.  I was flying it from my balcony, because of strong winds and less of GPS signals it crashed against my building and fell from 5th floor.  I have taken almost 28 flights, it behaved well everytime.  Only yesterday it behaved against my wishes. Wanted to control it and tried pushing it to the other side but nothing helped. Those 5 seconds before the crash ,  I can never forget.

Physical damages -  1) Battery cover is in two pieces , 2) rubber which holds the gimbal is gone ( only one side ) .

I thought it will still fly. But I am getting these errors



I am from India, i bought this drone in Australia. We dont have any repair centers here.

The help chat guy told me you can claim the warranty only from the region bought it.
  

Sending it to Australia is not an option. I have one of my friend coming next week who stays in Dalls - United states. I can send my drone through him.  I dont have DJI Care plan as well. I am not really sure if the unit can be replaced /repaired under warranty in US. Can someone consider this as a special case and help in getting it repaired/replaced.

Thanks
Nitin

nitinsaini Posted at 3-8 23:47
Hello Everyone.

Crashed my Mavic Mini yestertday.  Feel so sorry. I literally saved for almost 6 months to buy this and it crashed within 20 days of purchase.  I was flying it from my balcony, because of strong winds and less of GPS signals it crashed against my building and fell from 5th floor.  I have taken almost 28 flights, it behaved well everytime.  Only yesterday it behaved against my wishes. Wanted to control it and tried pushing it to the other side but nothing helped. Those 5 seconds before the crash ,  I can never forget.

Open a support ticket with DJI, they may be able to suggest something.
Why is sending to Australia not an option?

I agree, 108 EUR seems excessive.. its basically 1/3 of the total cost..

nitinsaini Posted at 3-8 23:47
Hello Everyone.

Crashed my Mavic Mini yestertday.  Feel so sorry. I literally saved for almost 6 months to buy this and it crashed within 20 days of purchase.  I was flying it from my balcony, because of strong winds and less of GPS signals it crashed against my building and fell from 5th floor.  I have taken almost 28 flights, it behaved well everytime.  Only yesterday it behaved against my wishes. Wanted to control it and tried pushing it to the other side but nothing helped. Those 5 seconds before the crash ,  I can never forget.

Their policies are very very strict, more than any other company i've delt with. Maybe you can work out a deal to get it repaired in India..

SupBro Posted at 3-9 07:41
I agree, 108 EUR seems excessive.. its basically 1/3 of the total cost..

So you think it’s excessive for someone in Holland to earn €50 an hour ?
If I call out a repairman for washing machine or fridge repair I pay €75 for the call out, it includes nothing else, so for handling assessing the full drone repairing and repacking €50 is cheap.

Parts are obviously not to expensive, but shipping from one European country is going to cost anywhere between 25/40 so when you add this all up I think it’s about right, and I know that when you break all this down there would be very little for any company from this .

This makes me wonder how useful this video may be for us in the long run.

nitinsaini Posted at 3-8 23:47
Hello Everyone.

Crashed my Mavic Mini yestertday.  Feel so sorry. I literally saved for almost 6 months to buy this and it crashed within 20 days of purchase.  I was flying it from my balcony, because of strong winds and less of GPS signals it crashed against my building and fell from 5th floor.  I have taken almost 28 flights, it behaved well everytime.  Only yesterday it behaved against my wishes. Wanted to control it and tried pushing it to the other side but nothing helped. Those 5 seconds before the crash ,  I can never forget.

I stopped reading after I read you were flying it from your balcony.

hallmark007 Posted at 3-9 12:15
So you think it’s excessive for someone in Holland to earn €50 an hour ?
If I call out a repairman for washing machine or fridge repair I pay €75 for the call out, it includes nothing else, so for handling assessing the full drone repairing and repacking €50 is cheap.

I am willing to be one years salary that DJI does not pay their repair personnel 50 EUR an hour. This is not an in house call, so that comparison is incorrect. If DJI sent someone to fix my drone to my house, wow yes, its a great deal... but this is not the case.

Besides, though DJI tries to hide it, we all know that these drones do not get repaired on the spot, they send out refurbished ones, and repair your drone later, and send it out as a refurbished drone to another customer. It's a cycle.

SupBro Posted at 3-10 06:31
I am willing to be one years salary that DJI does not pay their repair personnel 50 EUR an hour. This is not an in house call, so that comparison is incorrect. If DJI sent someone to fix my drone to my house, wow yes, its a great deal... but this is not the case.

Besides, though DJI tries to hide it, we all know that these drones do not get repaired on the spot, they send out refurbished ones, and repair your drone later, and send it out as a refurbished drone to another customer. It's a cycle.

Again think logically , I have 6 people working for me, I pay them an hourly rate, if I charged €50 an hour and gave it all to them what would be my point in being in business.

Yes I know they replace drone, and in their policy to do this, they offer new replacement or as new refurbished, so again replacing a drone new or as new has a cost and to cover this cost the repairable drone must be brought back to refurbished as new because when returned to China it will need those new parts drone will have to go through tests to insure it’s as new, so it’s this that customer is paying for.

I read somewhere on the forum that someone crashed their drone , sent in for repair they’re many scratches dents and broken arm, dji sent a estimate for repairs including all tests and replacing all parts with scratches and new arm, user didn’t want to pay for assessment or panels to be replaced. But dji could not guarantee his drone if they did not carry all this work out, simply because it was not safe to return a crashed drone without first testing it.

So if the worker gets his hourly rate, I don’t know what it is in Holland but I’m certain it’s similar to Ireland and average industrial wage in Ireland is €38,000 per year so his hourly rate is high, plus take off shipping and this repair cost was reasonable, I also know from experience that dji are probably the cheapest repair service for their own drones.

Hello

My gripe was mainly:
All props was set to be changed (1 was broken, maybe 2-3 had a dent)
Whole gimbal axis arm module needed changing @ €30 when the issue was a rubber band at <€1 cost
All +VAT on top

The rubber band got me.

fjelsten Posted at 3-10 09:00
Hello

My gripe was mainly:

Well hopefully it will be a good job and your back flying soon.

Good luck and fly safe .

hallmark007 Posted at 3-10 06:51
Again think logically , I have 6 people working for me, I pay them an hourly rate, if I charged €50 an hour and gave it all to them what would be my point in being in business.

Yes I know they replace drone, and in their policy to do this, they offer new replacement or as new refurbished, so again replacing a drone new or as new has a cost and to cover this cost the repairable drone must be brought back to refurbished as new because when returned to China it will need those new parts drone will have to go through tests to insure it’s as new, so it’s this that customer is paying for.

Again think logically , I have 6 people working for me, I pay them an hourly rate, if I charged €50 an hour and gave it all to them what would be my point in being in business.

[b]Again, this cannot relate, you are not a 2 billion dollar company, you cannot compare yourself to this scale. 

Yes I know they replace drone, and in their policy to do this, they offer new replacement or as new refurbished, so again replacing a drone new or as new has a cost and to cover this cost the repairable drone must be brought back to refurbished as new because when returned to China it will need those new parts drone will have to go through tests to insure it’s as new, so it’s this that customer is paying for.

I understand, my point is that charging 1/3 of the cost of a new drone to repair the items from the original author of this post, is excessive. This is like breaking a $100 tire  and volkswagen charging you for a $25,000 refurbished/used vehicle. Why would anyone agree to this policy? 

I read somewhere on the forum that someone crashed their drone , sent in for repair they’re many scratches dents and broken arm, dji sent a estimate for repairs including all tests and replacing all parts with scratches and new arm, user didn’t want to pay for assessment or panels to be replaced. But dji could not guarantee his drone if they did not carry all this work out, simply because it was not safe to return a crashed drone without first testing it.

So if the worker gets his hourly rate, I don’t know what it is in Holland but I’m certain it’s similar to Ireland and average industrial wage in Ireland is €38,000 per year so his hourly rate is high, plus take off shipping and this repair cost was reasonable, I also know from experience that dji are probably the cheapest repair service for their own drones.  

I am quite confident that DJI does not repair these on location, their customer service representatives confirmed they are not located in the area code of your phone call, why would a chinese company chose to operate outside of china? it makes no sense. Hence, the fees that they are charging him are ridiculous. 

This is why I baby my mavic mini

djiuser_0sznpSoW5hVC Posted at 3-10 10:42
This is why I baby my mavic mini

Hahaha me too bro.. me too!

SupBro Posted at 3-10 10:36
Again think logically , I have 6 people working for me, I pay them an hourly rate, if I charged €50 an hour and gave it all to them what would be my point in being in business.

Again, this cannot relate, you are not a 2 billion dollar company, you cannot compare yourself to this scale. 

The repair Centre is in Netherlands and it’s real and dji have several around the world, so yes real and tangible and overheads and costs.

Look it’s reasonable to charge an hourly rate most companies do, leave your car fo4 service to VW and you will see bulk of cost is in the Labour , and shipping from Finland to Holland for a drone I would say minimum €40 , I wouldn’t get out of bed for less than this, but if you feel it’s to much they’re others who repair maybe they will do it cheaper .

Mr Sepo Posted at 3-9 19:55
I stopped reading after I read you were flying it from your balcony.

at first I thought the same and then I start to realize more and more that not everybody has the same free environment and opportunities that I have.  not everyone has the luxury to drive to the city park and fly for as long as you want unbothered until the park closes at 11pm.  sometimes I have to drive 30 minutes away, sometimes 10 minutes.  I would love to be able to drive nowhere and simply fly from home and if that means launching from the balcony because I live on the 25th floor and in uncontrolled airspace with zero local regulations...this is actually what the drone is meant to do.  fly as you are.  no judgment.

40 EUR for a shipping through EU is a theft. When I've bought stuff from Ireland the shipping fees were always within 15 EUR.

The S9+ that I currently have was already one of the best price in the whole Interweb and yet they offered free shipping... which isn't realy free but that would be overlooking the point.

DJI don't want to repair drones, they want sell them.

m80116 Posted at 3-10 11:32
40 EUR for a shipping through EU is a theft. When I've bought stuff from Ireland the shipping fees were always within 15 EUR.

The S9+ that I currently have was already one of the best price in the whole Interweb and yet they offered free shipping... which isn't realy free but that would be overlooking the point.

You won’t get UPS shipping from ireland for €15 unless your brother works for them.

1/2 kilo weight from Vicenza to Ireland Fedex €92 insured, I receive packages twice a month .

I think mini on its own weighs 249 g but is twice the size of the package I receive.

Hi, i want to ask what does change with the dji care, because i crashed my DJI MINI SE and i just sent it to repair. I've already bought the dji care one day after activating the drone, so i want to know how much i will pay with dji care