Wow, didn't take them long to take that down! I've already sent my email. Will repost addresses on PhantomPilots under P4 in case anyone else wants to vent their frustrations.

Email sent to all of the addresses:

Dear DJI,

I'd like to bring to your attention the number of Phantom 4 owners that are currently stuck on beta firmware V2.0.0.12. It would appear that with the launch of the P4P, the P4A and the spark, DJI has decided to abandon further development of the P4 and instead focus all of its efforts on newer platforms.

I purchased my Phantom 4 in September 2016 - approximately seven months ago. When I made the purchase, the Phantom 4 was your flagship model. There was no other consumer drone on the market that could rival it. Yet, less than a year later my significant investment has been resigned to the history books.

Regardless of your new projects, you really should continue to work to rectify issues of all models for at least a year after you stop directly selling them. The P4 was still for sale on your website until recently.

There is currently a thread on your own forum that has had in excess of 14,260 views and 359 responses about this firmware which went to beta and then disappeared. So far, there has been one response from a DJI representative and it was wholly unhelpful. The lack of response has been insulting is causing many of your customers to rethink their loyalty to the DJI brand.

You can find the thread here: http://forum.dji.com/thread-89940-1-1.html

The fact is that a group of people took a risk to trial new firmware and have now been abandoned by DJI with no way to upgrade or roll back. Leaving people stuck on beta firmware while many of these devices are less than a year old is unthinkable; and arguably unlawful in certain countries.

There is then the fact that when the DJI goggles went on sale, there were a range of features advertised as available to the Phantom 4. Hundreds of people based their purchasing decision on this compatibility, only to find it was quietly removed when the devices shipped. This again is a breach of the Consumer Rights Act in the UK and EU.

On behalf of the Phantom 4 owners, I implore you to please respond and let us all know what is happening. Can we expect new firmware? If so, when. If the firmware has been shelved, can you provide a definitive route for beta testers to roll back their firmware or a discount to upgrade to a newer model? And will you do the same for Goggle owners that bought them under the pretence that they would be able to use the full range of features based on your own compatibility chart?

I have personally never seen a company treat its customers with such contempt and will almost certainly never purchase another DJI product again. As a relatively well respected technology journalist, I'll also use whatever influence I have to ensure that other people know what they can expect from your company. Unless, of course, these issues can be fully resolved.

Kind regards,

SomeoneElsesDro Posted at 2017-6-1 10:23
Email sent to all of the addresses:

Dear DJI,

This has been brought to the attention of Engineering.  It is now been raised to a higher level.  If you are having an issue with the beta firmware.  You can wait until there is a solution or send your craft in for replacement/repair.  We appreciate your patience.

Tahoe Ed Posted at 2017-6-1 10:29
This has been brought to the attention of Engineering.  It is now been raised to a higher level.  If you are having an issue with the beta firmware.  You can wait until there is a solution or send your craft in for replacement/repair.  We appreciate your patience.

That's not the point (having issues with the beta firmware) Tahoe Ed and you know it....

This post is actually more insulting than the silence we've experienced thus far....
The issues are:

1-Beta testers left in the dark ans stuck.
2-Announced features in the goggles manual for the P4 removed after the product was released and shipped.
3-Abandoning support of a product before the end of its lifecycle (P4)
4-Ignoring a massive thread

some interesting stuff to read
https://www.google.de/search?q=class+action+dji+2017

"...breach of express warranty, breach of written warranty, breach of implied warranty, breach of duty of good faith dealing, negligence and breach of Pennsylvania’s unfair trade practices and consumer protection law for the proposed subclass of plaintiffs."

Sounds about right

Dnerve Posted at 2017-6-1 04:42
I don't think I am being particularly negative, just speaking the truth. We're the ones being insulted by this silence, not the other way around.

I am not doing anything against the forum rules or spamming or invading topics unless I missed something.

Neither did I but DJI Jamie took offence to something I said and like you and others in here was only telling the truth and he Banned me for 365 Days so I had to re-register under another name and DJI Jamie doesn't even have the decency to answer any PM's about it either, very poor and unprofessional on DJI's part.

So the edited post is rather interesting.

@Moderators, don't you know you can edit posts rather than hide them completely? I understand you didn't like emails listed there, but you could just had removed them to let the content of the post in place as it's rather interesting....

Luckily your hiding of the post doesn't work on mobile, so for the curious ones, have a look at the post that was ungracefully removed:


I don't really care if I get shutdown or banned, this thread already feels like all of us are, this needs to get out now and will be replicated in forums not owned by DJI such as phantompilots and other places, independent youtubers not afiliated with DJI will be notified as well...

Enough is enough DJI, show yourselves, own your stuff and support your paying customers!

SomeoneElsesDro Posted at 2017-6-1 10:23
Email sent to all of the addresses:

Dear DJI,

That's actually very well written and summarises most of the concern - well done. You forgot the 'tease' though of when DJI released a version of GO which had all of the extra intelligent modes enabled, but when they decided that a prod release of the P4 update would not be forthcoming, they then released a new version of GO which removed the modes for the P4. But not before many P4 owners had seen and tried to use the new modes.

I'm reminded of a scene from 'Pretty Woman' where Gere is offering Julia Roberts jewellery in a box. The box lid is open so she can see how beautiful it is, and just as she reaches for it he snaps the lid shut. They have a laugh and he opens the lid again. In this case, DJI publically beta tested a new firmware which incorporated intelligent modes, which was leaked and subsequently release was greatly anticipated - but DJI snapped the lid closed by delaying release of the beta to focus on other models. Then they opened the lid again with the release of a GO with the modes enabled for the P4, creating anticipation again with P4 owners - but then they snapped the lid closed by removing the modes for the P4 from GO. They then opened the lid again with the promise of full functionality for the P4 with their Goggles (no doubt requiring the new firmware) - but then they snapped the lid shut again by quietly changing their documentation to say functionality was limited. I think the P4 beta test wasn't about the firmware, it's about testing the beta tester's resilience while waiting for a prod release of the firmware to update their beta P4s...

And I don't believe I've breached forum rules with this post. It's all a matter of public record.

Thanks punchbuggy. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

I've posted the email addresses on PhantomPilots. Doubt it will come anything, but we're not getting anywhere on this thread.

Thanks for your input Tahoe Ed, but it doesn't really mean anything, does it? 'Raised to engineering', like the production release somehow got lost in a pile of socks somewhere at DJI HQ? This isn't a fault that needs diagnosing. It's a decision that needs explaining.

And your perfect recall of Pretty Woman is a little bit scary.

SomeoneElsesDro Posted at 2017-6-1 15:19
And your perfect recall of Pretty Woman is a little bit scary.

You haven't seen anything yet.  Wait until he starts to pull out quotes from Notting Hills.

SomeoneElsesDro Posted at 2017-6-1 15:19
And your perfect recall of Pretty Woman is a little bit scary.

And yet you obviously knew the scene...

ibuyufo Posted at 2017-6-1 15:32
You haven't seen anything yet.  Wait until he starts to pull out quotes from Notting Hills.

Do you mean the part when Hugh meets Julia in his bookshop and...

I'm just a boy, standing in front of a drone manufacturer, asking her to love him.

SomeoneElsesDro Posted at 2017-6-1 15:37
I'm just a boy, standing in front of a drone manufacturer, asking her to love him.

Mawhaha! You crack me up! (and we need a little of that on this thread now...). How about:

Max:
Let's face facts, this was always a no-win situation. Anna's a goddess, you know what happens to mortals who get involved with gods.
William:
Buggered, is it?
Max:
Every time. You're better off just sticking with flying your drones!

Or something like that... ;-)

But now, back to your regular channel.

We reported this thread to the R&D engineers, will let you know once we get any update, thank you very much for your patience!

We are finally being acknowledged by Team DJI! I think I just saw a squadron of pigs fly past my drone. If only I had tripod mode, I could have caught it on camera ;-)

Finally, some acknowledgment.  Well done on the email SomeoneElsesDro it was well written and to the point. Let's hope we have some positive action take place as this has gone on for too long.

Let's hope it's not yet another comment similar to the one made at the beginning of this thread.

Hopefully a clear statement will come out first to address the beta tester's hostage situation, but  also in relation to the status of the P4's firmware and features debacle with the goggles and all.

We know we were near production firmware with these features operational for the P4, so what is the reason for the holdback and for letting down the P4 customer base?

Dnerve Posted at 2017-6-2 04:15
Let's hope it's not yet another comment similar to the one made at the beginning of this thread.

Hopefully a clear statement will come out first to address the beta tester's hostage situation, but  also in relation to the status of the P4's firmware and features debacle with the goggles and all.

I'm pleased that you mentioned the entire P4 community because it's not just the beta testers who have been let down (although they have been worst hit). I sold my one year old P3A in January this year and purchased a new P4 because it was being advertised as DJI's latest and greatest and I wanted to remain at the forefront of their technology.  It was more than just disappointing to me to find out that a relatively new product was being discontinued and was no longer being enhanced. If I had known then I certainly would have just kept my P3A.

Now I am speechless.

I have a feeling the best we can hope for is a roll back for the beta testers. Hope I'm wrong.

Tahoe Ed Posted at 2017-6-1 10:29
This has been brought to the attention of Engineering.  It is now been raised to a higher level.  If you are having an issue with the beta firmware.  You can wait until there is a solution or send your craft in for replacement/repair.  We appreciate your patience.

Really?   I want to sell my P4 and need the production firmware.  The people on the phone and in chat just say use DJI go to update and want nothing further to do with it.

No more of the patronizing this fills us with regret or thanks for your patience crap.  We're all out of patience with you.  At this point I'd never buy another thing from DJI.  Give me production firmware so I can sell of this worthless chinese crap.

In the beta forum there were several promises of dji workers and none were met.

I have no hope that two loose messages will have more effect than in the beta forum.

keeping the pressure and don't believe the two loose message !!!!

wangrincreation Posted at 2017-6-2 11:27
keeping the pressure and don't believe the two loose message !!!!

I agree we need to keep pushing for  result. Let's push this to top again.

Leave it til Monday ;)

Happy Monday everyone!

Let's get this thread back at the top yet for another week!

Let's see how the migthy escalation goes...

Let's just hope it wasn't the quarterly update it seems to have been getting thus far....

Dnerve Posted at 2017-6-4 16:13
Happy Monday everyone!

Let's get this thread back at the top yet for another week!

And the beat goes on
La de da de de, la de da de da

Pressure on!

Morning DJI representatives. Hope you had a great weekend. Tahoe Ed, DJI Natalia - it's been four days since you told us this was raised. Can you please tell us what timeframe we can expect to wait for an update? Another few days? A week? Another month?

Please help us manage our expectations.

Hi All, I just got information from engineers, a new official firmware will be released soon.
Sorry we do not have the exact date when it's released, but you will not be kept waiting for a long time.

DJI Natalia Posted at 2017-6-5 02:05
Hi All, I just got information from engineers, a new official firmware will be released soon.
Sorry we do not have the exact date when it's released, but you will not be kept waiting for a long time.

Great news Natalia Thank you for the update

DJI Natalia Posted at 2017-6-5 02:05
Hi All, I just got information from engineers, a new official firmware will be released soon.
Sorry we do not have the exact date when it's released, but you will not be kept waiting for a long time.

Great news!

Great news!

DJI Natalia Posted at 2017-6-5 02:05
Hi All, I just got information from engineers, a new official firmware will be released soon.
Sorry we do not have the exact date when it's released, but you will not be kept waiting for a long time.

Sounds encouraging! Will the firmware support head tracking for the P4 with Goggles?

Great news. Hope this firmware will address the horizon tilted issue!