Please excuse all the details here, I find them necessary to fully tell the story.

I've been flying DJI drones for almost six years and flying my Inspire 2 with X7 since last December being mostly happy with the results. I had my first incident with the bird on July 21st of this year. It was hovering around 5 feet off the ground after takeoff, no movement or strange noises, when the front right prop came off and it flipped then hit the ground. Here's the log description:


1. Unit was in P-GPS mode and was responsive to RC input; 2. User throttles up at 97.5 seconds at 102.7s propeller is lost. 3. Shooting propeller 1, unit lost propulsion in air and fell; Force impact date: 2018 07 21 Force impact GPS location: 44.7267962 -111.3943088 Conclusion: Propeller installed incorrectly


It seemed possible I hadn't correctly put on the prop but I've installed and uninstalled them many times and it seemed odd that the drone would hover without issue before the propeller came off. Regardless, I had no better argument and paid the $483 repair fee and a $500 rental for a different job, then got my drone back on August 8th. That was just the start of my problems.  

The drone came back and I booted everything up to make sure I had a picture with the X7 and that the props worked before a job with the Chicago Bulls on September 22nd. I should have checked that the SSD would record and that both my RAW and ProRes licenses were still there. DJI sent back the Inspire with none of these working even though they were fine before I'd sent it in in the first place! The SSD port wouldn't read my cards and the drone was telling me I needed to buy the ProRes and RAW licenses again, all of this happening while in front of Zach LaVine on the job for the Chicago Bulls, an organization I hoped would be a consistent client. I ended up renting a different Inspire 2 body for $300 and shooting a second day with the license to provide at least half the content in ProRes as I'd said I would.

I got in touch with support again and they said the issue would qualify as an expedited warranty claim (2 day air mail). I filled out all of my necessary information - stating that the SSD port wasn't reading and that the drone didn't have the ProRes/RAW licenses - and also sent them my X7 and SSD with media on it that I didn't have time to back up before sending to test everything. I specified to NOT DELETE this SSD - that it was only for testing if necessary - via the repair form, an email, and two different phone calls. This was on August 27th (a Monday) and I waited until Friday to get any response. The response email quoted me $273 for "motor issues" (there were none) and said nothing about the SSD port or licenses. After yet another 30-minute phone call the representative told me this was a mistake.  

On September 4th I got an actual response pertaining to the problems, saying that the central board module was being replaced. I was moving to a different address at that point so I called DJI to change the destination of the repaired drone and make sure the X7 and SSD were being sent back with it - they said that's fine and that I should get the drone in two days. I had another job coming up on September 10th that I didn't want to rent again for.

On September 7 I got a separate email with a service quote on my X7 - that was not broken - for $171. I called yet again to tell them that it didn't need servicing and that I needed it sent with the drone to the new address ASAP. At this point I had to rent another drone for the September 10 shoot for $650. That same day I recieved an email that the drone and X7 were being sent back to the original address, not the one I called and specified to change!

I just now recieved my drone and X7 (September 13th) and they've wiped the irreplacable files for a documentary off my SSD (after I requested four times via multiple channels for this not to happen), as well as failed to reinstall my CDNG and ProRes licenses.

I've spent $1,983 and lost irreplacable media - as well as my professional reputation with the Chicago Bulls - thanks to the absolute ineptness of DJI's engineers, support, and logistics staff. I've called support multiple times to remedy this issue and was told last week that an upper-level staff member would call me before Wednesday this week. I still haven't heard from them and am hoping this post will catch someone's attention. I will be forced to pursue this matter via other means if I don't hear back from the company ASAP.

Hi there, you have our sincere apologies for the unpleasant experience with our customer service, this is not what we want our customers to expect, your case has been escalated to the higher team to follow up, our manager has contacted you but unfortunately, your voicemail box has already been full. We will inform the team to contact you again very soon, please wait patiently, thank you.

You have my sympathy.  
Please note the heading at the top of the page at www.dji.com.  One heading says Professional and the Inspire 2 and X7 are listed under that heading.  While the feature set and design of this equipment is outstanding, the introduction timing, the firmware updates, and the U.S. service department are complete incompetent amateurs.  I sent back my X5R for warranty repair and they sent me a non working replacement.  It took four...yes I said four tries to get a working unit back from them.  

They do not understand recursion testing on Firmware updates.  A professional software company runs recursion testing on each version of new software to make sure that they have not introduced new errors in the software.  DJI clearly does not even understand the concept of professional practices when releasing new firmware and software.

My suggestion...Never send them irreplaceable media.  They are not competent to follow instructions.

Buy a second unit and make sure it works.  Keep it as a hot backup.  Never depend on a rapid turnaround from U.S. DJI repair.  They don't know how to do it.

If another company who does know how to do support and software professionally comes out with similar units, DJI will loose professional sales over night.

Look at how long it has taken them to release current firmware for the CS vs the IOS equipment.  The support for the Cendence has also been very slow and poor.

Professional DJI users are second class citizens when compared to their consumer customers.

I am a long time loyal customer who has spent about $30,000 with them.  

Their management does not seem to have a clue how to support professional users.

At one time there were rumors that Apple was going to buy them out.  If only we could be so lucky.  DJI bought Hasselblad.  I wish they would move some of the Hasselblad management to take over the professional drone support.  Hasselblad knows how to do this.

Ray

rmaxwell.dccnet Posted at 2018-9-13 19:22
You have my sympathy.  
Please note the heading at the top of the page at www.dji.com.  One heading says Professional and the Inspire 2 and X7 are listed under that heading.  While the feature set and design of this equipment is outstanding, the introduction timing, the firmware updates, and the U.S. service department are complete incompetent amateurs.  I sent back my X5R for warranty repair and they sent me a non working replacement.  It took four...yes I said four tries to get a working unit back from them.  

Ray, we are very sorry for your previous unpleasant experience with our repair center, we understand there are still many things we need to improve, but we are keeping learning from customer's experience and suggestions. When customers complaints, we will do our best to help, hope you will have a better experience with us in the future.

I don't mean to be negative at all but with everything they have been doing lately. They have made it loud and clear. DJI does not care about it's customers in the slightest bit. Professional or hobbyist.  They say they do but have proven they do not by their actions. They have zero honor what-so-ever.  

They just copy and paste the exact same answer on almost every single thread instead of coming here and being human.  DJI has provided probably some of the worst customer service I've ever experienced, and that's included dealing with Comcast. I had a rep yesterday in chat straight out say I was a liar even when I had proof of what I was talking about. It's just insane how things are done.

For what it's worth.. I'm a complete stranger so I don't matter much, but I am sorry to hear about your poor experience and the loss of all of that footage. I can't even imagine how frustrated and upset this would make me.   One thing I would try is to download some restore software and run it on the drive. I was doing a photo shoot several years back and afterwards while going through the camera options to do a few things, I messed up and formatted the entire card I was using.  I was freaking out and luckily a friend pointed me in the direction of a few free drive restore programs. I was able to recover everything off of card which saved the day.

Hedsic Posted at 2018-9-14 05:15
I don't mean to be negative at all but with everything they have been doing lately. They have made it loud and clear. DJI does not care about it's customers in the slightest bit. Professional or hobbyist.  They say they do but have proven they do not by their actions. They have zero honor what-so-ever.  

They just copy and paste the exact same answer on almost every single thread instead of coming here and being human.  DJI has provided probably some of the worst customer service I've ever experienced, and that's included dealing with Comcast. I had a rep yesterday in chat straight out say I was a liar even when I had proof of what I was talking about. It's just insane how things are done.

Hi Hedsic, I understand how you feel, very sorry about it. I've checked your own post, the shipping status has been updated, wish you receive the package soon. As for the communication with our chat? May I have your email address when you contacted our chat? We'd like to investigate the exact status and keep learning from it, thanks so much for your time.