My Mini 2 SE arrived with a dent in the heatsink cover.
I believe that it either has mismatching plastic parts collected from
leftover Mavic Mini and Mini 2 parts or it's very poorly assembled.

After some time the heatsink cover cracked at the point of that dent while I was carrying it in a handbag in my motorcycle case.
There are also very tiny and symmetrical cracks on the lower body near rear arm hinges.
Dealer(Karfo Karacasulu) thinks that the drone crashed.
I said that I received a defective drone and the plastic quality used on the drone is awful, that's why the drone is in this state after a 6 month use.
They said they can't do any kind of warranty repair on the drone without fixing the damage on the body at my expense at first.
My drone was imported by Karfo Karacasulu. They are selling DJI drones at over 30-35% MSRP.
I paid $450 for a $339 drone and received a defective unit.
I have the unboxing video of my drone, where I was opening a sealed mailbag of the drone.
Even in that video you can see that lines are not matching at the heatsink cover and there is a dent.


This is how I received the drone, photo from unboxing video.


A few hours later, still before the first flight.

Photos below are taken today

Why are you complaining about the dent 6 months after you got the drone?

Sean-bumble-bee Posted at 11-18 05:00
Why are you complaining about the dent 6 months after you got the drone?

Because I was not aware that it'll leave my drone out of warranty 6 months later. I couldn't think that part was under stress and it's going to crack with some compression.

Dirty Bird Posted at 11-18 05:06
Curious why you did not return the drone for exchange when you first received it & discovered the dent?  I cannot speak for DJI, but can you understand how folks might be skeptical when you waited 6 months to bring up the matter?  How do we know you didn't crash the drone, or broke it storing it in your motorcycle bag?  Unless you sent the photo showing the dent six months ago, how do we know you didn't take the video yesterday & altered the timestamp?  If I received a damaged product I would make it known immediately & demand a replacement right away.  That is what you should have done six months ago when you first opened the drone & discovered the damage.

I have the unboxing video of the drone showing the serial number. It possible to catch a few frames in that video showing that the heatsink cover has a dent. Ofcourse carrying it in motorcycle bag has some effect but it cracked at the point of the dent. If it were carefully manufactured and assembled it wasn't going to crack.

Dirty Bird Posted at 11-18 05:26
As I said, how do we know that video wasn't taken yesterday?  The timestamp of a video is easily altered.  Is there a newspaper with a date visible in the original video?  I'm not saying you did alter the date, but do you see my point that we don't know when the video was recorded?  The time to have taken care of this was when you first received the drone & discovered the problem.

I'm opening a sealed mailbag showing the shipment date of April 11, 2023 13:20 in the unboxing video. You can alter the timestamp but you can't forge the date/time in hundreds of video frames.

Hello, there. Sorry for the inconvenience. To confirm your case with our teams, would you please tell us your phone number, email address and the Serial Number of the device? Thank you.

DJI Wanda Posted at 11-18 05:42
Hello, there. Sorry for the inconvenience. To confirm your case with our teams, would you please tell us your phone number, email address and the Serial Number of the device? Thank you.

I'm going to send those information from private message.

Below an additional image with the dent but without any damage on the body.

Kopanz Posted at 11-18 05:05
Because I was not aware that it'll leave my drone out of warranty 6 months later. I couldn't think that part was under stress and it's going to crack with some compression.

Ok.
"They said they can't do any kind of warranty repair on the drone without fixing the damage on the body at my expense at first."

What repair is required other than the replacement of shell parts, 2 parts - the middle shell that carries the arms and the heat sink cover?
The former requires a complete dismantling and rebuild of the drone, the latter is probably 10 minutes work if that.

Sean-bumble-bee Posted at 11-18 06:01
Ok.
"They said they can't do any kind of warranty repair on the drone without fixing the damage on the body at my expense at first."

They think that the middle shell is critically damaged and it's dangerous to use the drone in this condition. However nothing is loose on the drone and the drone isn't operating like it had any crash.
They say that currently the drone is out of warranty, when they send the photos of the drone to DJI for the warranty repair DJI will refuse warranty repair because it's damaged.
They even asked me for the flight records of the crash it had.

Kopanz Posted at 11-18 06:18
They think that the middle shell is critically damaged and it's dangerous to use the drone in this condition. However nothing is loose on the drone and the drone isn't operating like it had any crash.
They say that currently the drone is out of warranty, when they send the photos of the drone to DJI for the warranty repair DJI will refuse warranty repair because it's damaged.
They even asked me for the flight records of the crash it had.

I would agree that the middle shell appears compromised and should be replaced but if you have not crashed it and assuming it is within the warranty period, then the replacement of the middle shell should be a warrant matter itself.
The replacement of the heat sink cover is, in terms of the work and time needed, a trivial matter, I would have thought the cost of the cover itself was minimal.
Besides, from memory, the heat sink cover MUST be removed in order to dismantle the drone and the complete dismantling of the drone is required when the middle shell is to be replaced ...... I.e. there is NO additional work involved in replacing the heat sink cover.
Have a look at Mavic Mini and or Mini 2 dismantling/teardown videos on youtube.

Do DJI themselves have offices in Turkey? If so I woud contact them directly.
Aside from questioning the delay in posting this thread, the only other thing I would question is the green smudges on the rear of the heat sink cover.

As for logs, if you have not crashed the drone and are telling them that the drone has not been crashed, then their request for logs seems a bit daft to me.

It would likely mean them trawling through however many .txt flight logs you have or sent them and, unless they have software that can read the encrypted flight logs. It's going to take some time to decrypt the logs and additional time to look through the decrypted files in an attempt to find a undeclared crash.
Since you have a recorded mileage, of 22.03 miles, you have obviously sync'ed logs with DJI at some point in the past, if those were FLY app logs then the DAT's on the screen device will have been deleted.
That leaves the DAT's on the drone and there is likely to be a limited number of those, perhaps 15 - 20, and they'd need software from DJI to decrypt those.
There is limited storage space available for storage of those DAT's on the drone so the old logs are over written ....... unless there is some storage space we dont know about.

As far as I know there is no way for them to know how many flights the drone has flown, so, as far as I know, you could send them 50 logs or 100 logs and say "that's all I have" and they can't prove otherwise .... unless you didn't send then a log that had been sync'ed and DJI released that log.
A screen device DAT's name includes a counter that counts the number of times the drone has been switched on but that is no guide to the number of flights flown. Some of my DAT's cover 3 or more flight, others cover zero flights. Screen device logs, both .DAT & .txt, are only recorded when the screen device is connected. If you use a phone as a screen device then you can in fly the drone without the phone connected to the controller and consequently no logs.

Sean-bumble-bee Posted at 11-18 09:12
I would agree that the middle shell appears compromised and should be replaced but if you have not crashed it and assuming it is within the warranty period, then the replacement of the middle shell should be a warrant matter itself.
The replacement of the heat sink cover is, in terms of the work and time needed, a trivial matter, I would have thought the cost of the cover itself was minimal.
Besides, from memory, the heat sink cover MUST be removed in order to dismantle the drone and the complete dismantling of the drone is required when the middle shell is to be replaced ...... I.e. there is NO additional work involved in replacing the heat sink cover.

I was putting the drone in a blue plastic bag before placing it in the handbag to avoid scratching the propellers with the zipper.
That plastic bag was leaving a green stain on the heatsink cover and on the front arms of the drone.
Without any damage on arms of the drone it's impossible to just damage the body of the drone in a crash.
Especially the front section of the heatsink cover which doesn't contact with the ground.

Kopanz Posted at 11-18 05:46
I'm going to send those information from private message.

Below an additional image with the dent but without any damage on the body.

Thank you. We received the information.

Kopanz Posted at 11-18 10:03
I was putting the drone in a blue plastic bag before placing it in the handbag to avoid scratching the propellers with the zipper.
That plastic bag was leaving a green stain on the heatsink cover and on the front arms of the drone.
Without any damage on arms of the drone it's impossible to just damage the body of the drone in a crash.

Not really, it just depends on the hard landing, it is possible to hit a stone or other object in that place on the body and miss everything else, just saying its possible to cause damage there, not that it happened.

The flightlogs in the drone itself should prove either way if its been crashed or not.

Kopanz Posted at 11-18 05:46
I'm going to send those information from private message.

Below an additional image with the dent but without any damage on the body.

Hi, we got the response from our teams.
We are sorry for the inconvenience but the cracks on the aircraft can not be determined whether it is caused by a crash or occurred naturally. If users disagree with the damage assessment, we will apply for data analysis services for further investigation, which is also a normal procedure repair process.  
If we found there were no crashes or the cracks were not caused by the pilot errors and the device is still under warranty period, DJI will cover the repair fee.
Please synchronize the flight records and export the required data for analysis. Thank you.

DJI Wanda Posted at 11-21 04:29
Hi, we got the response from our teams.
We are sorry for the inconvenience but the cracks on the aircraft can not be determined whether it is caused by a crash or occurred naturally. If users disagree with the damage assessment, we will apply for data analysis services for further investigation, which is also a normal procedure repair process.  
If we found there were no crashes or the cracks were not caused by the pilot errors and the device is still under warranty period, DJI will cover the repair fee.

I uploaded all flight records I have on my devices right now. You can find a lot of flights ended with hand flips but it's not even crashed for once.

Kopanz Posted at 11-21 05:46
I uploaded all flight records I have on my devices right now. You can find a lot of flights ended with hand flips but it's not even crashed for once.

How many flights end in hand flips?
To be honest I think they stress the drone and should kept for emergency use only.
I think it is better to lower the drone into your hand via holding the throttle fully closed and contuse to hold the throttle furl closed until the motors stop. I have done this with a mini sized drone even in wind.
Even if it is too windy to lower it into your hand and you have to grab it out of the air, as soon as you hold your hand and the drone still you showed be able to hold the throttle closed and stop the motors.

Sean-bumble-bee Posted at 11-21 06:57
How many flights end in hand flips?
To be honest I think they stress the drone and should kept for emergency use only.
I think it is better to lower the drone into your hand via holding the throttle fully closed and contuse to hold the throttle furl closed until the motors stop. I have done this with a mini sized drone even in wind.

Almost 80% of the flights. But I found a less stressful landing method recently. I'm holding the drone from upper center, pulling it up a bit and flipping it. This way the motors are not screaming like crazy. But those cracks near the rear arm hinges are not really a crack. They are stretch marks. Because that the drone has 3+ year old Mavic Mini middle shell it's plastic is disintegrating in layers. My drone is a very early Mini 2 SE build from 2022-11. I'm sure they used leftover parts which they couldn't fit to a Mavic Mini.

Kopanz Posted at 11-21 07:59
Almost 80% of the flights. But I found a less stressful landing method recently. I'm holding the drone from upper center, pulling it up a bit and flipping it. This way the motors are not screaming like crazy. But those cracks near the rear arm hinges are not really a crack. They are stretch marks. Because that the drone has 3+ year old Mavic Mini middle shell it's plastic is disintegrating in layers. My drone is a very early Mini 2 SE build from 2022-11. I'm sure they used leftover parts which they couldn't fit to a Mavic Mini.

My Mavic Mini has 930+ flights and first flew May 2020, it has no cracks.
It does however have a GREAT many hand launches and, more to the point, hand catches with the motors being stopped as I described i.e. lower the drone onto my hand with the fingers of that hand being slightly cupped, keep the hand still and hold the throttle closed.

Sorry but I think your theory of degradation due to age is wrong, simple as that.

The rear arm pivot of the Mini 1 & 2 series is clamped to the drone's shell by a triangle of three screws,

I think it is far more likely that the cracks/stretch-marks are caused by the way the drone has been handled. Grab and twist motor-stops will not help reduce the stress placed on the airframe.

Kopanz Posted at 11-21 05:46
I uploaded all flight records I have on my devices right now. You can find a lot of flights ended with hand flips but it's not even crashed for once.

Thanks for your reply. Could you please contact the dealer and let them apply for the data analysis services for you? They will help you create the case.