Warranty repairs

[robinbanks]

Often, when I land, I will come towards me and down at high speed, pushing the drone away from me at the last moment. Makes the drone do sort of an air-burnout/brakeslide. The "Whoosh!" of the props and gust of wind are always thrilling, and I find it can often be a conversation starter when you've picked up (a) spectator(s).

Recently, I was in-flight when my spotter transcribed a text message to me which would cause me to need to abort my flight and take care of something important that had come up, and time was of the essence. Hurriedly I flew my drone back towards myself, and once close, while coming in for one of my show-off landings, I failed to appropriately compensate for the ambient breeze, causing my drone to drastically overshoot the "brakeslide zone" and instead of doing an air-burnout, collided with a (closed - after bus. hrs) building instead.

Now, to be fair, it was cold AF (Canada, eh?) so I was bundled up, impacting my ability to detect the breeze. To make matters worse, I took off from a business parking lot that is surrounded on 3 sides by buildings, and then went to the "middle" of the buildings to fly. Without realizing it, that also further impacted my ability to acknowledge and react appropriately as I was cozy alongside a building while the drone was out in the open, not the best place to be aware of the weather

TL;DR - I slacked on being observant and paid the price.

Now to the main topic of this post:

I have DJICR for my MA2 (the unfortunate victim in the above situation) however I live in Canada and the DJI official page basically tells me I don't get any convenient coverage for my drone, heck I don't even get to deal with DJI directly for the warranty case, my only choice is to deal with an "approved/assigned" 3rd party, and if I want to get my drone fixed under warranty I'm going to have to jump through twice the number of hoops as most of the rest of the population. Now, to find out that there is no DIRECT, CONVENIENT way for me to excersize the warranty coverage I ponied up good money for was disappointing, to make an understatement. Now throw Covid into the mix for added "fun" and you can see I'm starting to dread the process I'm about to have to undertake...

Whats the fastest and cheapest way(s) for a Canadian with crash insurance to get back in the air? I don't really want to be sending my expensive toys on round trip holidays to the other side of the planet, or spending months waiting for stuff to dawdle through the postal system, checking tracking info a dozen times a day anxiously, if I can avoid it

 

[Deleted member 103366]

I can't help with this but suggest that you check whether your correspondance refers to a warranty claim, which basically means something was DJI's fault, or a care refresh claim, which means your fault.
The two are not the same thing and may have different solutions.
Care refresh is not a warranty, it is basically an insurance policy and you, most likely, will have to pay a nominal fee for the repair.
Your description seems to make clear that this would be a care refresh claim.

The above said, I have seen it written that asking for an assessment of the drone and an estimate of the cost of the repair may be advantageous as the straight forward repair may be cheaper than the care refresh fee.

 

[robinbanks]

Given the 90% failure of the gimbal (camera only connected by ribbon cable now), I HIGHLY doubt a private repair would be cheaper than using the DJICR I've already paid for... (The plan fee at least, obviously I would still need to pay the whatever $72 for the replacement fee)

 

[ackdrone]

When my MA got damaged I sent it to DJI in late December. They were very good about getting back to the day they received it(2 weeks). They requested the flih
Get record etc which I sent right away. The repair department sent a link to follow the progress within 2 days. Last week DJI said it would cost about $450 to repair or for $69 ( care refresh covered) they would ship new or refurbished, like new MA to me. Easy choice. MA was shipped Monday, should have it by next weekend. Not too bad really. It’s a good thing I have a MA2 to fly in the meanwhile. Best of luck
ackdrone

 

[DanMan32]

Unless you select Express to bypass the evaluation phase, they will first see if it's a warranty issue even if you tell them it was your fault, then assess repair costs. It's rather comical to get a response saying, "sorry, this incident isn't covered under warranty..." when you told them you inadvertently backed over it with a car.

It sounds like they improved the quoting process. For me they itemized the repair cost, but invoiced the refresh cost, without instructions on choosing one or the other. I miscalculated the repair total and thought the invoice was the repair total. I only had the M2 for a month so I wanted to save the refresh for a later time.

 

[tangy07]

Often, when I land, I will come towards me and down at high speed, pushing the drone away from me at the last moment. Makes the drone do sort of an air-burnout/brakeslide. The "Whoosh!" of the props and gust of wind are always thrilling, and I find it can often be a conversation starter when you've picked up (a) spectator(s).

Recently, I was in-flight when my spotter transcribed a text message to me which would cause me to need to abort my flight and take care of something important that had come up, and time was of the essence. Hurriedly I flew my drone back towards myself, and once close, while coming in for one of my show-off landings, I failed to appropriately compensate for the ambient breeze, causing my drone to drastically overshoot the "brakeslide zone" and instead of doing an air-burnout, collided with a (closed - after bus. hrs) building instead.

Now, to be fair, it was cold AF (Canada, eh?) so I was bundled up, impacting my ability to detect the breeze. To make matters worse, I took off from a business parking lot that is surrounded on 3 sides by buildings, and then went to the "middle" of the buildings to fly. Without realizing it, that also further impacted my ability to acknowledge and react appropriately as I was cozy alongside a building while the drone was out in the open, not the best place to be aware of the weather

TL;DR - I slacked on being observant and paid the price.

Now to the main topic of this post:

I have DJICR for my MA2 (the unfortunate victim in the above situation) however I live in Canada and the DJI official page basically tells me I don't get any convenient coverage for my drone, heck I don't even get to deal with DJI directly for the warranty case, my only choice is to deal with an "approved/assigned" 3rd party, and if I want to get my drone fixed under warranty I'm going to have to jump through twice the number of hoops as most of the rest of the population. Now, to find out that there is no DIRECT, CONVENIENT way for me to excersize the warranty coverage I ponied up good money for was disappointing, to make an understatement. Now throw Covid into the mix for added "fun" and you can see I'm starting to dread the process I'm about to have to undertake...

Whats the fastest and cheapest way(s) for a Canadian with crash insurance to get back in the air? I don't really want to be sending my expensive toys on round trip holidays to the other side of the planet, or spending months waiting for stuff to dawdle through the postal system, checking tracking info a dozen times a day anxiously, if I can avoid it

Just contact DJI and tell them what happened and you have DJICR. They will ask you to send in the drone and ask you for the payment as well. I have contacted them and got them to send me a shipping slip and payment receipt but decide at the last minute i did not want to go forward with it. I live in Toronto by the way.