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After a 6 week wait on delivery (which was reasonably fast in the scale of things), I managed to Crash my Mavic on it’s First flight and snap off the Gimbal mount – so had to send it straight off to DJI Australia for repair.
I had some good and bad experiences with the repair, so thought I would document the process – outlining what was good , what was bad, and what I thought DJI could/should have done better.
Whilst I am happy with the outcome, I did find parts of the process quite stressful and frustrating…
This was the first and hopefully Last time I have used DJI’s repair service (I hope not to wreck my drone again) so I have no idea whether my experience was typical… but I hope that it gives others an insight in to what they might expect if they need to send their drone in for repair…..
Below is a screen grab from the DJI Repair Progress system – the dates they quote are not necessarily accurate.. the case was reported on 14th Nov and I received the repaired unit back on 9th December - total elapsed time 25 days :
| Date / Time | | | | 14 Nov 15:00 | Problem initially reported | Wasn’t able to report via Online Support (not available for Australia) so I had to send an email to support@dji.com.. Received an automated reply with a case number |
| Waiting,.waiting.. for a response…. DJI-Ken provide some useful advice and help via the DJI Forum, including the DJIDownloadTool, and advice to Sync RC logs and instruction on how to do this. |
| | 15 Nov 23:00 | Human response from DJI Support | The provided an Analysis form to download and fill in… as an Excel Spreadsheet…. Seriously ?? It is not the 1990s anymore – surely an online form would have been much more efficient. | | 16 Nov 07:13 | Sent off completed spreadsheet and receuived an invite to sign up to DJIs zendesk support tracking system |
| | 16 Nov 23:19 | Received notification of scheduled Courier Pickup following day |
| | 17 Nov 13:00 | |
| | 21 Nov 11:22 | |
| | 23 Nov 11:00 | DJI Repair Acknowledged receipt, raised case number provided Serial #s of received parts and said it would be 2 days to assess the repair |
| | 01 Dec 20:04 | DJI Provided Damage Assessment and Quote for Repair – option one, pay for repair ($78) option 2 pay for replacement under DJI Care Refresh ($139) | The fault was deemed “Pilot Fault” … not convinced this was the case, but I preferred to pay then argue and further delay the process. However, I only had the option to pay for the Care Refresh (which I could have done by clicking a link)… I had to request another quote in order to pay the more likely (cheaper) option. | | 02 Dec 13:23 | Received requote for the $78 repair option |
| | 02 Dec 13:30 | |
| | 03 Dec 10:15 | Received acknowledgement of payment and told that it would take1-2 days to “process” payment and then 3-5 days for repair. Also asked to provide payment receipt. | Really ?? Paypal payments are usually instantaneous, not sure what extra processing would be needed o why they needed an extra receipt – sounds like a stalling tactic | | 05 Dec 17:10 | Payment Confirmed – Repair Started |
| | 06 Dec 10:22 | Repair Complete – estimated 2 days quality assurance |
| | 07 Dec 11:23 | Quality Assurance complete – estimated shipping next working day |
| | 08 Dec 16:00 | |
| | 09 Dec 14:00 | Repaired Drone delivered by Courier | | | 09 Dec 15:00 | Updated Firmware, charged batteries out for a test Flight... But RC would not Connect to Drone | Whatever I tried factory reset, different startup sequences, different mobile device, reinstall firmware… but the RC just was not connecting to the Drone whatever I did. Spent 25 online with DJI Support and they said I would need to send it back in for analysis… GRRRRRRR | | 09 Dec 16:00 | Relinked RC (Page 36 of Mavic Manual) and all good | I posted my RC Connect issues on the DJI Forum.. and it was suggested that I try a “Re-Link”… which worked. During the repair process the repair team would have used their own RC which automatically unlinked mine (they didn’t want me to send my RC in)… Would have been nice if they had mentioned that a re-link would be need… and would also have been good if DJI tech support knew about this. | | 09 Dec 17:00 | Finally get to do some Test Flights – All Good (so far) |
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Overall I was reasonably happy with the way DJI Handled it… but was frustrated by the many delays. They had my Drone for just over 2 weeks – and for the most part was told that I should expect an outcome within 1 or 2 days… which was typically 3 or 4 days. I realise they have other thigs to do than just fix my drone… but because I was expecting a response, I was regularly checking .. and getting frustrated… if they had simply said “within 5 days” I would have been very happy to get a response in 3 or 4.
I think that there was not enough information provided about how to access flight logs … I had to do quite a bit of research to find out how to do this … simple instructions should be included as a part of the process.
Finally, I was not told I would need to re-link my RC.. and tech support didn’t have a clue…. Once I found out what was wrong and how to fix it was pretty obvious and straightforward… but this frustration (and nearly a re-send back to repair) could very easily have been avoided with simple instructions from the repair team.
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