This is the story of my under warranty, dead Phantom 4 Pro and how shady DJI techs and are.


Hello Everyone.

TLDR:
Drone did safety landing out of nowhere, frame cracked, battery and insides of drone got burnt. Sent in to DJI under warranty, they made pictures of my second battery, WHICH WAS NOT BURNT, but didn't take picture of the one that was inside the drone during the incident. I think this was done on purpose, so they could deny fixing my drone. You can clearly see on the affected battery, that it has burn marks on it, and even shadier is that once they sent back the drone, they 'forgot' to send back the affected, melted battery!

The detailed story:
It happened on 2018 September 24th, when I was flying my Phantom 4 Pro. I had a flight with one of my batteries, absolutely no issues during the flight. The accident happened when I put in my 2nd battery to fly again. The battery was at 100% and both of my batteries are originals.
After taking off the drone went to 6 meters altitude as usual, but then the LED's started going crazy and I lost control of the drone. There was some kind of error on the screen too. The drone then did a "safety landing", but it was going way too fast and "crashed" into the ground, which caused the frame to crack. I turned it off immediately and smelt that something had burned. I took out the battery and saw that it was indeed the case. The battery was melted which burned onto the insides of the drone. I took the drone to the official service ASAP, on the same day the accident happened on a Monday on 2018 September 24th.

I brought my drone with both of my batteries to the official service. They shipped the drone with all of its components to Germany for further evaluation.
Then the Hungarian service had a very long back and forth about the drone and they asked me to provide Flight Records, which I gladly did.
The German DJI Service finally said after 1 month of waiting: "We found the issues you mentioned", however according to them the cracks on the drone didn't happen because of the burnt batteries because it was a "safety landing". I know for a fact that while the drone did the safety landing it crashed with a lot more force into the ground than it should have. The drone didn't break fully, it just received a few minor cracks.
DJI is ignoring the fact that the drone did indeed receive cracks during the landing, which I had no control over, ignores the fact FULLY that the battery got burnt, they just focus on the cracks, which they try to explain by saying, it happened at another time.
According to them the safety landing happened within acceptable speed, so it couldn't have happened then. Even if that was the case, they can't explain why the battery got burnt and they even try to cover it up, by only making pictures of the other battery, which had nothing to do with the crash and is indeed not burnt.

Please DJI explain to me, how I am the one responsible in this:
1: Drone works perfectly with 1st original battery.
2: Changed battery to another original one for 2nd flight.
3: Drone immediately goes crazy once it reaches 6 meter altitude, and does "safety landing" where drone cracks.
4: Battery and insides of the drone are burnt and melted.

All you are trying to do is tell me that the frame cracked at another time, but you never said anything about how the battery got burnt.
My drone was under warranty when all of this happened so DJI is responsible for fixing everything. They should be held liable to their own products issues.

DJI Germany took pictures of all parts of the drone, even the 2nd battery, but for some weird reason they decided not to take pictures of the burnt battery, and even weirder is that once they decided not to honor my warranty they didn't send back the burnt battery only after the Hungarian service told them that they "forgot" to send it back.
This is extremely shady behavior and even begs the question, if they even took into consideration that there is a burnt battery.
To me it seems like that they didn't investigate my case properly and just tried to come up with whatever reason they could think of, just to deny my warranty request.

After 3 months of back and forth between them and the Hungarian Service, they declined to honor my warranty and sent us a ridiculous invoice to fix the drone. I declined it so they sent back the drone to the Hungarian Service, except one thing. They didn't send back the burnt battery for some reason. After emailing them, they finally sent it back.
Tell me DJI, why did you "forget" to ship back the burnt battery, and why did you "forget" to take pictures of it?

Here you can see all the pictures that DJI Germany took:
https://drive.google.com/open?id ... 21qlkiKFnjxsYvAKKJF

And here are the ones I took including the burnt battery (IMG_3662.jpeg) :
https://drive.google.com/open?id ... MlrTw1w2rk-r4Sgo7mf

In my opinion DJI should fix everything wrong with my drone and also give me a replacement battery as that was under warranty too.

Please look into my case further, because it is ridicoulus what they did with me.

Thank you for reading the whole story and I really hope I didn't write this long post for nothing.
Dominik

CAS-2306905-G6V7G8

Hi Dominik, sorry to read the frustrations and troubles you had with your Phantom 4 Pro. Since you've provided the associated case number ( CAS ) above, I will coordinate this to the team that handles your concern. We will notify if there is an update to your concern. Appreciate your patience. Thank you.

Do you have an update on your case?

Can I get my drone back? Posted at 2-12 22:53
Do you have an update on your case?

Hello,

Yes I do. The Service from Hungary called me today and said, that DJI offered me a 30% discount on the original repair bill.
I kindly declined, because to me this just proves, that they admit that my case was not properly handled.
I want DJI to answer to these questions:
Why did you not take pictures of the burnt battery?
If it was by accident, do you admit to not having reviewed and investigated my case properly?

I think either they did it on accident or purposefully, but neither case is acceptable obviously. If they did it on purpose, that tells a lot about their practices. If they did it on accident, that means that my case wasnt investigated based on all the evidence they had. The burnt battery is the main clue to what happened to the drone and they fully ignored to review it.
I think that the only acceptable way of handling this would be from DJI to offer me to fully repair my drone free of charge.

Thank you for reading and Thank you Diana for handling my case.

Edit: Posted it twice by accident. Sorry.

DominikMak Posted at 2-13 05:34
Hello,

Yes I do. The Service from Hungary called me today and said, that DJI offered me a 30% discount on the original repair bill.

Ouch. I feel 30% for an error like that doesn't cover it. It might if they came out with a formal apology.

DominikMak Posted at 2-13 05:34
Hello,

Yes I do. The Service from Hungary called me today and said, that DJI offered me a 30% discount on the original repair bill.

Thanks for getting back to us. Upon checking your case, no crash was found from all flight records, and we're sorry that warranty service cannot be offered in this kind of situation. The management will keep following up your case during the working time, hope we can figure this out soon.

"Thanks for getting back to us. Upon checking your case, no crash was found from all flight records, and we're sorry that warranty service cannot be offered in this kind of situation"

Why does it matter if there was a crash or not? The battery and the drones insides got burnt. That must be solved under warranty, whether there was a crash or not.

"The management will keep following up your case during the working time, hope we can figure this out soon."

It seems like management does not care about its customers at all, because it has been more almost 2 MONTHS since your last reply and there was absolutely nothing done in this case. It has been over HALF A YEAR since all this started. Meanwhile my drone is deprecating in value and I can't use it, which is more of an issue, because I missed out on amazing shots on my travels. DJI is making me lose memories I would otherwise have if they weren't so incompetent.

It is very weird that DJI would even offer to fix the drone 30% off. Does that mean, that DJI is at fault for 30% and I am 70% at fault? How does that even make sense? IT DOESNT.

DJI made a faulty product, which caused the drone to 'crash and burn', therefore MUST REPLACE THE DRONE OR FIX IT FREE OF CHARGE!

I want something to be done about this ASAP.

Diana, I ask you, to please contact upper management about my case, because this is getting ridiculous.

DominikMak Posted at 4-10 03:41
"Thanks for getting back to us. Upon checking your case, no crash was found from all flight records, and we're sorry that warranty service cannot be offered in this kind of situation"
Why does it matter if there was a crash or not? The battery and the drones insides got burnt. That must be solved under warranty, whether there was a crash or not.
"The management will keep following up your case during the working time, hope we can figure this out soon."

Hi Dominic, according to the data protection rules, we can not simply across the dealer, our higher level team has explained to the dealer the situation and recommended to resend the drone, the device will be repaired with a discount of 30% because of the complaint, a free repair is unfortunately not possible according to the data analysis, hope for your understanding.

Wow. This sounds absolutely ridiculous. In Australia we have a consumer watchdog (ACCC) who holds companies accountable. They would not get away with such fraud here