I promised that I would put up a full review of my experience with sending my Mavic Air into DJI for repair. Here is that review.
A significant amount of time has been spent bashing DJI support. I cannot speak to each person's experience. I don't claim that my experience is the only way it will be. Please allow me to share with you how my experience went. Your results will vary.
This is long, so bear with me please.  If you just want the short story (timeline) skip to the end.
For background, here is the crash story, and here is the day by day repair tracking.
Creating the case was very easy. I just went to this repair site, and completed an online repair request. After opening the case, I received an email with a shipping lable to return the broken aircraft to DJI. The shipping was UPS Ground. I shipped the aircraft off on Monday 6/18. It arrived at the DJI facility on Thursday 6/21. At that point, I began to watch the progress at the DJI Support site. DJI Officially 'received' the aircraft on Saturday 6/23. I received an email stating that they had received the Mavic Air and inventoried it. The email included that inventory. The support tracking page showed that it had been received and the damage was being assessed. I waited through Monday, and then on Tuesday evening (6/26) I hadn't gotten an update, so I began to pursue its progress. I was able to start an online chat with support. The first representative I encountered said that the aircraft had been assessed and that an invioce had been sent to me 2 days prior. I assured him that it had not been sent because I have been looking for it diligently. He said that he would resend it. (story greatly condensed). I decided to make a phone call to see if talking to someone would make a difference, so I phoned the support number found on the support page. (scroll to bottom and look in 'Other Support Options'). This phone call went much faster and better than the chat and ended in the Invoice showing up in my inbox within 2 minutes of the call. The invoice was as I expected it to be. (To prepare myself for what it may be, I compared what I thought needed to be fixed, with this price list.) However, I had some personal timeline issues so I wanted to know if I could expedite the shipping. I called back to see if this was possible. This part was a little confusing and frustrating. In order to get expedited shipping, I would have had to have the support rep submit a request to have it expedited. But the decision would have taken (possibly) 24-48 hours to get the decision and then recreate the invoice for me to pay for the repair and expedited shipping. If I had risked that, there was a larger chance that even if they did expedite, I would still miss the timeline, and be away when the aircraft was actually shipped back. I decided to leave the request in, but go ahead and pay the current invoice. This would get them to go ahead and repair, and (hopefully) if the expedite request was approved, I could just pay the difference. On Wednesday 6/27 I started another chat with the online support team. They worked with me to update the payment status and a few hours later, the online status indicator showed that the aircraft went into repair status. Once the aircraft goes into repair status, the online indicator shows 3 steps of repair. Repair, Test, Quality Assurance. The aircraft stayed in repari status for most of the day. then, in the eveing, the status changed to shipped. Thursday, 6/28 the status changed to Product Delivered. Shortly after that, I received an email with the tracking number for my shipment. It turns out that they had shipped it 2nd Day air, and the package was due to be delivered on 7/2. On Monday, 7/2 I received the package. It was not my repaired Mavic Air. It was a NEW Mavic Air. I checked it by the serial number, as well as contacting support to get them to tell me if it had ever been activated before. The only activation was mine that I had done 15 minutes before the phone call.
That is what happened. Here is how I feel about it: All in all, the experience was not a bad one. There are points in which they could improve. But I am a tough customer.
I feel like if I hadn't watched every step and contacted them each day to push it along, it would have taken longer. By the same token, the reps that I spoke to were all very nice, and willing to help push it along to the best of their ability. My take on it is, that while there are definitely improvements that can be made, the process is good, and obviously, since I ended up with a new Mavic Air instead of a repaired one, I'm extremely happy.
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Timeline:
6/16 – crashed. – opened case with DJI to repair aircraft. 6/18 – handed off to UPS for shipment to DJI 6/21 – Arrived at DJI repair facility in TX 6/23 – officially received by DJI 6/26 – Damage assessment done - quote sent. 6/27 – Paid quote chatted up rep and pushed process along 6/28 – aircraft stayed in repair status all day. – end of day received shipment notice 7/2 – Mavic Air arrived – turns out to be brand new bird
Thanks for reading.
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lvl.4
Captain
Administrator
Second Officer
First Officer
If you just want the short story (timeline) skip to the end.