Nonsense From DJI Tech Support

CaptTPT · Nov 3, 2017

Spoke with Tech Support today. Eight month old battery works perfectly while I fly for an hour. Three hours later do firmware update which fails for some reason. Out to dinner. Come home and retry the update. Suddenly get error message. Battery starts flashing 2 center lights on and off. Tried to update with DJI Assistant and other tricks suggested on this forum. Nothing worked. Now all lights off. No power from battery. All parameters from the 3 batteries I own have been similar. Perfectly good normal batteries. Plane and controller works normally after update with the 2 other batteries. Tech support says the warranty is expired. Can’t help you! Sorry but that is BS! Don’t tell me a firmware missmatch error and resultant battery error disqualifies me for tech support or a repair because the batteries are more that 6 months old. They say I will have to pay$$$. Now am I out of line or is this a bunch of $$$$?

Former Member · Nov 3, 2017

You are going to have an uphill battle even if it's their FW that bricked your battery. You can send it in anyway and see what happens.

Their warranty policy is:

Battery 6 Months and Charge Cycle less than 200 Times

CaptTPT · Nov 4, 2017

Thunderdrones said:
You are going to have an uphill battle even if it's their FW that bricked your battery. You can send it in anyway and see what happens.

Their warranty policy is:

Battery 6 Months and Charge Cycle less than 200 Times

I’m sure it’s whichever’s less. However, the battery was in perfect condition until the firmware issue happened. That was 3 hours earlier so it’s not the battery. It’s the firmware. IMHO

PT_Mavic · Nov 4, 2017

CaptTPT said:
I’m sure it’s whichever’s less. However, the battery was in perfect condition until the firmware issue happened. That was 3 hours earlier so it’s not the battery. It’s the firmware. IMHO

Your logs should document the fact that the battery was working three hours earlier with different firmware, that it was recharged and failed with different firmware shortly after. At least, I hope your logs captured the battery ID before it failed on the retry.

If you can show the same battery completely failing 3 hours after it was working, with the only difference being firmware, you might have a solid case for a warranty exception.

People will remember stories like this once there's an attractive and viable alternative to DJI; they seem to just hate people who've already given them money whenever they have the opportunity. And sooner or later, there will be an alternative. Monopolies cannot exist forever in business; only corrupt politicians can force them to continue in existence by suppressing commerce and competition. Cable companies, for example, but the markets are finally finding ways around even that gov-enforced monopoly. And someday, maybe even the electric companies too. But I digress............

CaptTPT · Nov 4, 2017

After presenting my case they agreed to take the good but non-functional battery for testing with a disclaimer they were probably going to charge me for correcting the firmware. Does that mean every time there is a firmware missmatch from update failure, like will occur if your internet connection fails during update, you have to buy new batteries?

Former Member · Nov 4, 2017

PT_Mavic said:
Your logs should document the fact that the battery was working three hours earlier with different firmware, that it was recharged and failed with different firmware shortly after. At least, I hope your logs captured the battery ID before it failed on the retry.

If you can show the same battery completely failing 3 hours after it was working, with the only difference being firmware, you might have a solid case for a warranty exception.

People will remember stories like this once there's an attractive and viable alternative to DJI; they seem to just hate people who've already given them money whenever they have the opportunity. And sooner or later, there will be an alternative. Monopolies cannot exist forever in business; only corrupt politicians can force them to continue in existence by suppressing commerce and competition. Cable companies, for example, but the markets are finally finding ways around even that gov-enforced monopoly. And someday, maybe even the electric companies too. But I digress............

Very well said. Let's just hope that it's not a case of "meet the new boss same as the old boss" (The Who)