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 lvl.1
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First of all, hi everyone! I've been a long time lurker, but I'm too excited to remain in the shadows and not post this.
I've been reading these forums for weeks now, seeing the delays, seeing the frustrations, and even seeing the problems that some people have experienced.
I'm not some rookie that's new to drones either, I've always been fascinated by things with remote controls, r/c cars and trucks, little helicopters, and eventually working up to a P2V+, then a P3P, then a P4, and once the Mavic was announced, I knew that was the drone for me, as the size of the Phantom series drones always made it harder to travel for me. I've brough all three Phantoms of mine on planes before, never any issues; I even feel kind of awesome stroling through TSA with a drone on my back while some lady gets tackled to the ground for having too much chocolate in her carry on.
Pre-orders are something I've never been a fan of, and something I very rarely do (usually just with Forza and Grand Theft Auto video games) as I feel most things can wait until they hit shelves and bugs are worked out. But after seeing all of you deal with pre-order issues and slow deliveries of Mavics across the board, I felt it was a safe bet to do a pre-order of the Mavic so I'd get it before the end of the year. Late October I decided to pre-order the Mavic on the greatest website on earth, Amazon. I buy everything on Amazon, no more standing in lines at the grocery store with an embarassing amount of toilet paper for this guy! I've bought all three of my previous Phantoms on Amazon, even took advantage of a quick exchange of the P2V+ after a "compass calibration issue" totally caused it to fly into unseen powerlines I didn't see a half a mile away. I sold the P2V+ on Amazon, sold the P3 to a coworker, and some sort of change of Amazon selling prevented me from selling the P4 on Amazon, and instead I sold it on eBay in early October for a sliver over $900, which I was pretty stoked to get so much for.
Amazon told me my delivery date would be 11/15 of the Mavic, which didn't seem too bad. Then they changed it to 12/1, not great, but not terrible. I decided to do a customer service chat with someone from Amazon, just to see if I could get some more info on why the shipping date had been moved. They told me they would put my name at the top of the shipping list. I didn't believe the person, but whatever, it's not like they're the ones making the drones, so I accepted his lame offer of moving me to the front of some sort of shipping list and let it be. A couple days later, Amazon bumped the order ship date from 12/1 to 1/15, not good, not cool, not acceptable. I saw on these forums that some other people had gotten a similar notice from Amazon, so I knew I wasn't the only one with the issue.
This whole time, I had been monitoring eBay too. The original hype that had caused Mavics to sling for $2k to $3k+ on the black market of eBay, were now gone. Mavic auctions were starting to end for $1,500-1,600, which is still outragious, but come on, not terrible at all when you think of the drone you're getting for that, and without waiting. I even exchanged a few emails with a seller on eBay who had opened his, updated the firmware, and flown it, but yet was selling it as 'new'. I informed him that it's not new, and won't fetch anywhere near as high a price, he was rude with his response, so I never responded to him, and his auction ended much lower than those around him. I even saw a couple Mavics sell on ebay for less than $1,000, but they were from brand new sellers with zero feedback, with only stock images, and shipping from China. So they were probably scams with nothing ever getting delivered. I even did some light bidding on ones, but never winning any because I didn't really want to exceed $1,200.
A few days ago though, I noticed on the forums here, and on eBay, that a few Apple stores around NYC were getting Mavics. People were even able to reserve them for in-store pick-up. I added Apple to my list of sites to monitor frequently, along with BestBuy, B&H, Adorama, Newegg, and a few others. And then, just the other day, some people were reporting the Apple stores around Tampa, FL, getting Mavics. Seeing as how Tampa is much closer to me than NYC, I started to feel some relevance to me. I was checking the Apple site every 5 minutes during a good chunk of my day. I work in Naples, FL, which is a town that's very wealthy and has a demographic of 99.99% old people. Drones aren't a hot item down here. Frustrated with no updates on their site, I figured I could try calling the two closest Apple stores. However no one seems to answer the dang phone at an Apple store. Multiple attempts, multiple times being on hold for more than 10 minutes without ever talking to a person. Super annoying.
So during my lunch break yesterday, I figured I'd swing in to the Apple store to see if they had any, and if not, chew them out for not answering their phones. When I walked in, there were like two dozen employees all in red shirts just standing around. About half of which were helping the seniors look at pictures of their grandkids on this fancy thing called the cloud. The other half were suddenly swarming to me, all eager to help me. I inquired about the DJI Mavic and asked if they had any kicking around out back. One guy busts out his phone as quickly as Jesse James during a duel and starts typing away. Some of the other associates disipated off. Quickdraw McGraw tells me that he's showing one DJI Mavic on "orange inventory status", as if I know what that means (and google shows nothing, anyone know what "orange" means inside an Apple store?). The guy asks if I want it, I blurt out "YES!" so fast that I think I may have spit all over him, I dunno, my vision started getting a little fuzzy and I felt lightheaded. Was this real? Did I just stumble upon a Mavic on my lunch break? The guy tells me to come look at the floor model (one of those empty shells that some guy bought by accident), and there were three employees trying to bend the legs the wrong way. Didn't these plebs watch any youtube videos about this thing, ugh. Quickdraw McGraw tells me to wait with these guys while he goes and figures out why someone hasn't brought the Mavic from out back to out front yet. The three dudes start asking me about the Mavic, what I know, how I knew they had one, and they were all super excited and happy for me. No one there knew just how rare these things are, no one knew they're being inflated over on eBay, none of them knew that DJI isn't fulfilling pre-orders made through DJI. They all said that individual stores don't order product, that stuff just gets shipped to them and they don't know what they're getting until it arrives.
After what felt like a eon or two, or maybe just a fortnight, I dunno, it was long, Quickdraw McGraw comes bursting out of the rear room like Kramer on Seinfeld and he's holding a DJI Mavic box in his hands. Holy moly frijole, it's a Mavic! He jostles over to me and hands it to me. Wide eyed and bushy tailed, I admire it for a minute, then turn the box over to verify the seal is unbroken and that the sticker in the lower right doesn't say "Mavic - Model" like that hollow shelled one did that the guy bought by mistake. Nope, this was a legit DJI Mavic. Quickdraw McGraw appologized for the delay and said that it was still in the pile of boxes being unloaded by the FedEx truck that was still backed up against the building and still unloading boxes and they hadn't even checked it into their inventory yet. I swiped my card, and as I was strolling out the door with a big smug grin on my face, everyone was congratulating me, patting me on the back, and shaking my hand. I've never felt so awesome before.
I get to my car and my hands are shaking, I don't believe what just happened. But there's no time to waste, my lunch break had certainly gone on too long. So I scooted back to work and then slowly watched the clock tick by until the end of the day. I get home and remember I have dinner plans with a good friend. Dang it. Well, I will do the unboxing with my friend since I knew he would enjoy that. But I was also faced with a condundrum now. Do I sell this newly aquired Mavic on eBay and make a few hundred bucks profit off of someone who really needs/wants this thing, but then have to wait until January for my Amazon pre-order. Or, do I keep what I've got, and cancel my Amazon pre-order... run the scenarios by my fiance, she says to cancel the Amazon order and keep what I've got. I agreed and Amazon has been canceled.
After everything has been opened up and examed, I must say, this is an amazing little machine. It feels extremely solid and well built. No dust in the camera lens either. One concern I have is, just with handling it, I've noticed my fingers seem to touch the underside sensors from time to time. I will try to avoid this, but I wonder if oils from skin or just touching these sensors could cause problems. Batteries have been charged, firmware will get updated after work, as well as purchasing DJI Care Refresh or whatever it's called. I do like that now we're finally able to charge both the remote and the battery at the same time.
Work is dragging by, knowing what's waiting for me at home. Typing this book of a forum post is a great way to kill some time though. For those of you who took the time to read all this, thank you.
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While headed back to work
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It's so small!
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All unfolded
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lvl.3
lvl.2
lvl.4
First Officer
Captain
