Bought a Use Air 3 from eBay BUT it won't link

[Conservative Nihilist]

I recently bought a used Air 3 from a New York seller on eBay, but I was only a little concerned when the seller casually mentioned during our eBay chat that I'd need to link the drone with the controller he was sending, because, as he claimed, he had used a different controller with the Air 3 he was selling me, yet oddly enough neglected to link the drone with the controller he paired with it for sale to me.

Since the RC controller linking process only takes a couple of minutes on most DJI drones, the mention by the seller that I'd need to carry out the linking process myself after the purchase struck me as odd, but not outright suspicious. Well, the big day came and I took delivery of my new-to-me Air 3, which arrived in pristine condition and appeared virtually new with hardly any signs of previous use. Charged up the controller and flight battery and fired up DJI Fly, only to find that the drone would NOT pair with the controller even after I followed the instructions to the letter multiple times. The drone is bricked and 100% inoperable now, so I am not a happy camper, to put it very mildly, after shelling out nearly $700 for this impressive-looking but clinically dead paperweight.

Watching YouTube videos recently I ran into an account of a scam that is reportedly occurring with greater regularity now than in the past. The way this fraud works is that a seller of a DJI drone releases his drone to a buyer after payment, but WITHOUT unbinding that drone from their personal DJI account so that the new owner can link the drone with its controller. The seller bides his time until that inevitable complaint message arrives from the buyer who finds himself unable to use the drone, and THAT is the point when the seller demands a cash "ransom" from the buyer, in exchange for the seller's removing that drone from their DJI account.

I desperately want to believe that I have not fallen for this scam but it is only when I hear back from the seller and do NOT receive a demand for further payment before this drone can become operable, that I will know for sure I haven't been taken for a ride. If I have indeed been tricked by this seller, this will be the very first time in all my years of buying used DJI drones on eBay, that I lost my entire payment to a dishonest seller.

This particular seller was so helpful and polite that I don't want to believe that he deliberately sold me a dead drone under the pretext I would be able to use it, but then it is only after I see his reply or don't see any reply to my message, that I will know for sure if I lost that $700 outright on this purchase. I'd be curious to hear from any other contributors to this forum who might have encountered a predicament of this nature when buying a used drone from eBay or Amazon. I own several older DJI drones, and it will be a sad day if it turns out that the newest DJI drone I saved up to buy, turned out to be a bait-and-switch scam.

 

[Cafguy]

Did the seller give you real contact info? Can you contact them by phone? If they have gone that far I would rest a little easier. Ebay will refund your purchase if the seller sells you a "bound" Drone. They have a rule that these Drones MUST be sold as FOR PARTS ONLY. Ebay will refund you and pursue the seller for payment.
I hope you did not get scammed. You will have have to wait for Ebay to get a refund if you did BUT you will get it. The controller issue is a little strange BUT I have made many an Ebay Drone purchase and have not lost money yet. The fact that you can contact the seller is a good thing. I will not buy a Drone from an Ebay seller I cannot contact by phone first!

 

[Conservative Nihilist]

Wow, I had no idea that eBay even made it possible for buyers to contact sellers by phone, CafGuy. I'd been under the impression that eBay's dedicated chat feature was the only permissible means of contact between sellers and buyers and that external channels of communication are discouraged.

The seller of this Air 3 was prompt in responding to questions and crucially had earned an eBay customer approval rating close to a perfect 100% based on hundreds of previous online sales there dating back several years, so he does have a reputation to protect and likely just forgot to un-bind this drone from his DJI account before sending it away. To eliminate the possibility that the (USB-C to Apple Lightning) cable I used to connect the Air 3's controller to my iPad might have been the problem, I swapped in three different DJI cables sequentially, but to no avail in my efforts to link the drone with its controller.

The only reason I remain slightly ill at ease is the casual mention made by the seller that I would need to bind the drone to its controller myself on delivery of the drone. Putting myself in the shoes of a seller with a clear conscience about the good condition of a drone that is advertised on eBay, I would have taken the 2 minutes required to link the drone with the controller being shipped along with the drone, rather than presume the buyer had the expertise to carry out that linking process per DJI's detailed instructions. That way the drone would fly right out of the box and earn me another positive customer review on eBay without delay.

I'll sit tight for a couple of days and hope the seller will get in touch to confirm the error I suspect on his part, and to let me know he has unbound the drone from his DJI account. My gut instinct about this seller is that he is an honest man who on occasion gets absent-minded in the fine detail of handling his online sales business.

 

[Cafguy]

Wow, I had no idea that eBay even made it possible for buyers to contact sellers by phone,

They dont you must use the contact seller info and tell the seller that it is a condition of your purchase that you be able to contact them just in case the Drone was not unbound correctly I have never had a seller complain about it and they are happy to speak to me by direct Email or phone.
The controller thing is a tad strange perhaps the seller has no idea how its done or maybe they are not aware of the Binding accounts thing it has happened to me and they just went back into their account and re-did it when I let them know it must be done.