Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed it

[abacus01]

So,
Went to call DJI now and it seems like they have 5 or six different hobby shops listed. And get this, I called one for support and they asked me if i bought it from them and I didn't. The guy says well i can only stay on the line and answers questions if its within 5 minutes only. He then instead of helping me kept saying to refer to the manual. This is the end for me of buying anything DJI. I will not put up with this nonsense after spending 1300.00. Anyone else annoyed about this? here is the list.
Flying Camera (Canada)
ONLY for Phantom series Unit 3 7870 Enterprise Dr Chilliwack BC V2R 5N8 +1 (866)-785-3099 Ext. 3 Mon-Fri 8:00 am - 5:00 pm (PST)
STC NYC ELECTRONICS (USA)
ONLY for Phantom series 300 W. 49th Street, New York, NY 10019 +1 (212)-459-8997 Mon-Fri 9:00 am - 7:00 pm (EST)
US Hobby (USA)
ONLY for Phantom series 5010 S. Decatur Blvd, Unit H, Las Vegas, NV 89118 +1 (702)-997-6424 Mon-Fri 9:00 am - 5:00 pm (EST)
UAVDirect (USA)
ONLY for Phantom series 14365 W. State Highway 29, Liberty Hill, TX 78642 +1 (512)-778-6366 Mon-Fri 9:00 am - 6:00 pm (CST)
TheNerds.net
ONLY for Phantom series 2646 NE 189th Ter, North Miami Beach, Florida 33180 +1 (888)-566-6373 Ext. 120 Mon-Fri 9:00 am - 6:00 pm (EST)
Atlanta Hobby (USA)
ONLY for Phantom series 6110 Parkway North Dr Cumming Ga 30040 +1 (678)-513-4450 Mon-Fri 8:00 am - 5:00 pm (EST)
DJI LA Office

 

[UrAwFuL]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

Nothing in LA?!

 

[sidebox]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

So,
Went to call DJI now and it seems like they have 5 or six different hobby shops listed. And get this, I called one for support and they asked me if i bought it from them and I didn't. The guy says well i can only stay on the line and answers questions if its within 5 minutes only. He then instead of helping me kept saying to refer to the manual. This is the end for me of buying anything DJI. I will not put up with this nonsense after spending 1300.00. Anyone else annoyed about this? here is the list.
Flying Camera (Canada)
ONLY for Phantom series Unit 3 7870 Enterprise Dr Chilliwack BC V2R 5N8 +1 (866)-785-3099 Ext. 3 Mon-Fri 8:00 am - 5:00 pm (PST)
STC NYC ELECTRONICS (USA)
ONLY for Phantom series 300 W. 49th Street, New York, NY 10019 +1 (212)-459-8997 Mon-Fri 9:00 am - 7:00 pm (EST)
US Hobby (USA)
ONLY for Phantom series 5010 S. Decatur Blvd, Unit H, Las Vegas, NV 89118 +1 (702)-997-6424 Mon-Fri 9:00 am - 5:00 pm (EST)
UAVDirect (USA)
ONLY for Phantom series 14365 W. State Highway 29, Liberty Hill, TX 78642 +1 (512)-778-6366 Mon-Fri 9:00 am - 6:00 pm (CST)
TheNerds.net
ONLY for Phantom series 2646 NE 189th Ter, North Miami Beach, Florida 33180 +1 (888)-566-6373 Ext. 120 Mon-Fri 9:00 am - 6:00 pm (EST)
Atlanta Hobby (USA)
ONLY for Phantom series 6110 Parkway North Dr Cumming Ga 30040 +1 (678)-513-4450 Mon-Fri 8:00 am - 5:00 pm (EST)
DJI LA Office

What did you need help with?

 

[ryanhoelzer]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

The LA office is at the bottom of the list.

They added dealer shops that are authorized to work on them..

 

[elaijah]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I was on the line today with Los Angels Office and it went okay. I don't think the guy was trained on answering hard questions but how to stick to a guide line script for rma purposes. But guess I come here for real answers! Because this community figures out a lot! Thanks everyone!

 

[rrmccabe]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I called dji support direct a few days ago. Support was good. You could not get direct support?

 

[yali]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

are you not buying anything DJI ? Then what are you going to buy from where? I am just wondering.

 

[abacus01]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I really enjoy flying the phantom, but no after being brushed off, numerous times...even after speaking to the LA office and yes i forgot to list that its still open. When i called even them they cut me off after about 5 minutes, the girl on the phone said i can't stay on the line with you anymore thats their rules. Heck with them, i hope i don't have a flyaway on this one, but you can never be certain. I only fly close by, I'm not into breaking any records. My hats off to those that do though, but its too, scary for me to fly it out of site. To each his own. I don't have 1300 to burn. I won't support a company that doesn't support its customers. Call some of those numbers up and see what kind of support you get. I am not happy with it. My opinion.

 

[rhrpilot]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

If you need repair work and/or support I suggest you contact aces deals.biz and ask for the owner, Peter Ellin. He is very knowledgeable and great to work with.

 

[sidebox]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I really enjoy flying the phantom, but no after being brushed off, numerous times...even after speaking to the LA office and yes i forgot to list that its still open. When i called even them they cut me off after about 5 minutes, the girl on the phone said i can't stay on the line with you anymore thats their rules. Heck with them, i hope i don't have a flyaway on this one, but you can never be certain. I only fly close by, I'm not into breaking any records. My hats off to those that do though, but its too, scary for me to fly it out of site. To each his own. I don't have 1300 to burn. I won't support a company that doesn't support its customers. Call some of those numbers up and see what kind of support you get. I am not happy with it. My opinion.

Again, what support were you calling for? What was the issue or information that you needed?

 

[ircphoenix]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I wasn't happy with my experiences with DJI LA either. Sent them an email. No reply for 48 hours. So I called several times hearing a "we are experiencing extremely heavy call volume, please call back later." That was about an hour of calls every 10 minutes to try to get in the queue. Spent an hour waiting for an answer, someone answered, got the formulaic lame "do this first" email (which I had already seen and done from being on these boards and listening to excellent advice). I told him I wasn't happy that I was going to have to call back and wait for ANOTHER hour... but he insisted that he couldn't help me. So did all the steps again for good measure... then had to call AGAIN... have a recording tell me to call back later for another hour and wait on the phone AGAIN for 40 minutes before anyone picked up.

Then I got the RMA and UPS label. After that point it was smooth and Ben Puleo (who I guess runs the RMA swap warehouse in LA) was fantastically communicative via e-mail. Even e-mailed me on a Saturday and sent me back my SD card which I had accidentally left in the drone. New drone is okay... though now I'm having corrupted SD card issues... dunno if it is the camera or the SD card.

BUT... I had to spend 4 hours of my day on the phone desperately trying to get DJI to do the right thing in the first place... 2 hours of which was me getting hung up on by an automated message. I think their call queue is 15 people. Which, if they spend all day at 15 people constantly waiting for customer service, they really need to consider hiring more people to field questions.

On a scale of 1-10, I'd rate the RMA process prior to this Ben dude as a 3. Ben only would be a 9 or 10. Average would be about a 5 I guess.... I more heavily weight the negative phone experience as a result of me luckily having a day off during the week to handle this. If I had to handle this working a normal weekday job, there's absolutely no way I could have spent 4 hours on the phone trying to get DJI to do the right thing.

 

[Morgon]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I've had a ticket open (for my bad unit-installed battery) since Monday. It looks like it finally got assigned to someone yesterday, but he also hasn't responded in that time. Hopefully that will change today or at least 'soon'.

 

[Redwood]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I just wrote about this in another thread (Where to purchase?):

You would not believe my recent experience with DJI... I crashed my Phantom Vision+ because of pilot error 2 months ago. I contact DJI several times to get an estimate on repair time, cost, etc. and did not get very good answers. They told me to pay to send it back to a DJI service center (I live in California and they just opened one in Hollywood, CA) and I would have to pay UP TO half of what I paid for it ($650) and wait 1-2 months. I had a completely broken gimbal/camera and GPS unit and was expecting a large repair bill. I waiting patiently and didn't hear much from DJI for weeks and weeks. After UPS confirmed it was delivered it took 2 weeks for them to "check it into inventory". Then I waiting another month for them to email me that they were going to look at it soon! I wasn't very hopeful but I had my second quad to keep me busy while I waited.

Anyways.... 2 weeks ago I got an email from DJI saying thanks for my patience, they fixed it FOR FREE and it was already being shipped back. 2 days later I had it and it's flying perfect. I didn't pay anything except to ship it down there! I've totally changed my opinion about DJI customer service (at least the US office). It took awhile but it was my fault the gimbal, camera, and GPS broke and they didn't make me pay anything!

Gotta be honest if I didn't have my 2nd quad to use in the meantime I would not have been so patient since I was expecting a large repair bill.

 

[sidebox]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I just wrote about this in another thread (Where to purchase?):

You would not believe my recent experience with DJI... I crashed my Phantom Vision+ because of pilot error 2 months ago. I contact DJI several times to get an estimate on repair time, cost, etc. and did not get very good answers. They told me to pay to send it back to a DJI service center (I live in California and they just opened one in Hollywood, CA) and I would have to pay UP TO half of what I paid for it ($650) and wait 1-2 months. I had a completely broken gimbal/camera and GPS unit and was expecting a large repair bill. I waiting patiently and didn't hear much from DJI for weeks and weeks. After UPS confirmed it was delivered it took 2 weeks for them to "check it into inventory". Then I waiting another month for them to email me that they were going to look at it soon! I wasn't very hopeful but I had my second quad to keep me busy while I waited.

Anyways.... 2 weeks ago I got an email from DJI saying thanks for my patience, they fixed it FOR FREE and it was already being shipped back. 2 days later I had it and it's flying perfect. I didn't pay anything except to ship it down there! I've totally changed my opinion about DJI customer service (at least the US office). It took awhile but it was my fault the gimbal, camera, and GPS broke and they didn't make me pay anything!

Gotta be honest if I didn't have my 2nd quad to use in the meantime I would not have been so patient since I was expecting a large repair bill.

This highlights the point I'm trying to make by asking OP what issue he was calling DJI about. He says that he was told to read the manual several times. If people are calling DJI to discuss issues that are solvable via a forum or the manual, it wastes time that DJI could be doing things like providing free repairs for Redwood. I can't say this for certain, as OP has not responded to my questions about what issues he was trying to call in about.

 

[Birdman]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I contacted DJI via email concerning the Phantom Assistant app for Macs. It doesn't run on computers that say it should. A week later they acknowledged receipt. A week after that they said they were turning it over to their R&D team. It's been a couple more weeks and no response. Not very good service, I think.

 

[CRankin]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

I can understand someone at a hobby shop suggesting that people refer to the manual for basic questions. But I do not think that this behavior is acceptable on DJI's part.

Here's the rub... They build a product that's easy to fly, relatively reliable/dependable, and start changing their target market from hobbyists/enthusiasts to more mainstream people (like Realtors, and contractors, and whatnot) - you know, folks who just want to buy an RTF item, pull it out of the box, and put it in the air. These folks use their quads as a tool for a specific function of their jobs, and some (many?) don't (and won't) sit down to read through a whole manual before using it.

That's part of what happens when you take your product to the masses. If DJI isn't geared up properly to handle significant call volume for everything from fly-aways to "How do I turn this thing on again?" then they shouldn't have marketed their product the way they did to every Tom, ****, and Harry Homeowner. Companies need to start thinking of selling these products as a means of building a relationship with customers - not just an easy way of scoring a few dollars from a one-time sale.

 

[Morgon]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

Finally got a response from DJI regarding my battery. Of course, not exactly what I was looking for:

Dear [Morgon].

Thank you for contacting DJI. Please contact the dealer that you received the unit from and see if there is a battery available for purchase through them. At this time, we would not be able to provide you a replacement battery.

Sigh. My reply:

Thank you for your response.

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting your response, but why would I purchase an additional battery? The battery that was provided with the unit is defective; to resolve this with the dealer (Amazon) would require me to return the entire Phantom 2 Vision + package, something I would prefer not to do.

My P2V+ is registered with DJI, certainly there is some sort of warranty available?
You say "at this time" you cannot provide a replacement battery; at what time would you expect to be able to replace it, since it was part of the unit?

I certainly hope that you can appreciate that I just want my product to come with all parts intact and operational.

We'll see what he has to say. It's possible he's just saying that 'right now' they don't have any replacement batteries available at this moment [but that they would help me when they do], but I couldn't help getting the feeling he was brushing me off.

 

[jiminyfixit]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

It has been over a week since I emailed customer support about questions on trying to get two of my P2V+ cameras working. Nothing, zip.

 

[ryanhoelzer]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

It's been said for a while that they're not much good via email, but if you go through the phone process they've been taking care of people pretty well.

 

[ircphoenix]

Re: Customer support from DJI is terrible now - they changed

If you can wait for an hour to get IN their queue, then wait for another hour to get THROUGH the queue.