Folks, I encoungered some absurd answer to a warranty crash repair request from DJI and want to share my experience with you. Last week, I took my Mavic Pro out in a park. The first two flights went well. But at the third fligh, as soon as I powered up the drone, the drone elevated to about 20 feet, and then appeared to lost power in the midair and crashed to the ground.
Naturally, I sent the drone back to DJI for service. Since it looked like it lost power during the flight, I thought it would be covered under the warranty. The estimate came back and quoted a main board replacement. However, DJI said it was out of warranty, as they could not find the crash! How strange, I thought, this cannot be the case,. I am the one who witnessed the crash. So I communicated the DJI support, and they aksed me to provid a download datasheet from my DJI Go 4 App, which I did.   

Today, I got the most absurd answer from the engineer: "After reviewing all the flight logs provided no crash was found. Last several flights are over 10 minutes long as appear to land safely." So it is out of warranty.

How absurd that is? Basically, the engineer said "we don't believe you saw what you saw because we could not find the crash in the flight data."  So I must be illusional when I saw the crash. LOL. Thank you very much, Dr. DJI engineer psychologist for your diagnosis!!  


Let's assume that I had an able mind when I witnessed the crash. And if the engineer could not find a record for that, would the logic conclusion be that the drone had a main board issue, which apparently was diagnosed by DJI at the first place.   

I just want to share this experience with the community here. If you have same experience, please share as well.

Can you post the flight log?

ALABAMA Posted at 4-2 13:30
Can you post the flight log?

Did you mean the files under the folder named "FlightRecords"

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tBN4ivlRCFemZo6ivqE4S0uLK5VR2kB1
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1B1aobuFLiFF5SWL015ShvJqjdaK64Sat

These two are the flight records before the crash on the same spot. Hoever, neither I nor DJI engineers could find the flight record for the crash.  

Howie Wang Posted at 4-2 13:55
Did you mean the files under the folder named "FlightRecords"

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tBN4ivlRCFemZo6ivqE4S0uLK5VR2kB1

Those files are no use to anyone, best you go to this site and follow the instructions to upload the relevant file, then come back here and post a link to the result: https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

Thank you! I actually found something interesting when I inspect the FlightRecords folder.  Under the main folder FlightRecords, I can only see two flight record files created on the day of crash March 20. However, under the subfolder FlightRecords/MCDatFlightRecords, I can find three files created on the day of crash. I assume the third file corresponds to the crash. But a corresponding file was not created under the main folder.  Does anyone have the experience? I hope the pictures were posted correctly here.

Hi Howie, we apologize for the crash accident and the data analysis result is no crash found. Your concern will be escalated to the appropriate team to double check, we will have someone to contact you soon, please wait patiently. Thank you.

DJI Mindy Posted at 4-2 19:28
Hi Howie, we apologize for the crash accident and the data analysis result is no crash found. Your concern will be escalated to the appropriate team to double check, we will have someone to contact you soon, please wait patiently. Thank you.

Mindy,  someone did contact me and told me that they found a power on event, but no crash recorded. Sure, so your engineer successfully proved that the crash data was not recorded. Thank you!

But isn't not recording data correctly by drone is a warranty issue?  Does DJI warranty exclude a hardware /software issue that led to data not being recorded correctly?

I am certainly happy to pay for the repair. But I think it is reasonable for DJI to prove that it is out of warranty. Not finding crash data corresponding to the crash I personally witnessed is not a proof.   

Howie Wang Posted at 4-6 11:03
Mindy,  someone did contact me and told me that they found a power on event, but no crash recorded. Sure, so your engineer successfully proved that the crash data was not recorded. Thank you!

But isn't not recording data correctly by drone is a warranty issue?  Does DJI warranty exclude a hardware /software issue that led to data not being recorded correctly?

Maybe they were looking  at the wrong data???  Sorry for your hassle.

Howie Wang Posted at 4-6 11:03
Mindy,  someone did contact me and told me that they found a power on event, but no crash recorded. Sure, so your engineer successfully proved that the crash data was not recorded. Thank you!

But isn't not recording data correctly by drone is a warranty issue?  Does DJI warranty exclude a hardware /software issue that led to data not being recorded correctly?

Hi Howie, our engineers have double-checked the flight records including those three .DAT data, still no crash record. The first one is normal landing, the second one is that the flight ended without any crash, the third one is the drone was not even taken off.
We have transferred your frustration again to the team, please wait patiently for further communication, thanks.

DJI Mindy Posted at 4-7 04:13
Hi Howie, our engineers have double-checked the flight records including those three .DAT data, still no crash record. The first one is normal landing, the second one is that the flight ended without any crash, the third one is the drone was not even taken off.
We have transferred your frustration again to the team, please wait patiently for further communication, thanks.

Thank you. Yes, I suspect the third one was the one that corresponds to the crash, even though the data did not register a takeoff. But that may be where the issue lies.