Never buy DJI drones - A nightmare with Phantom products

[tevek]

BigA107: thanks for your nice words! I know everybody/firm can produce some bad products on this world. As long as most of them, say 99%?, are solid, it is real good already. If you unluckily purchased that 1% of bad or unqualified products, the customer service will take care of it. But, the problem is that I met the bad customer services as well in DJI. That is why I have reason to believe the bad products and services provided by DJI.

If you got a bad product, that is probably unlucky. But if you next get bad services, still unlucky?

Still do not make sense to you?


tevek: Thanks for your advice, which are really good to me. In fact, for the second product, they seemly liked to return the money back to me. But the next day, they changed mind. They said unless, they first receive the product and then decide what to do. You know what? An internet friend told me that he got the same situation, and DJI asked him to return the Phantom product to have a look first. He then mailed by UPS paid by DJI. Thereafter, DJI told him that DJI never received the drone back! That made him crazy.

What will you do, tevek, after you heard of above story?

Thanks!

DJI like most companies, will exercise their well
documented option of investigating the fault and at their discretion either repair or replace the drone package. A refund is another matter all together. I have never lost an article dispatched either by myself or a third party that could not be traced and rectified. Not sure where you are with your PS3 at the moment but I would send it back to DJI or, as earlier suggested, list your concerns here and see it can fixed by forum members. Pretty sure we could have had you back in the air by now. FWIW, my first Phantom was a PS3 and I never had a problem that was not due to my error and I thrashed it almost daily until I sold it.

 

[jgyao2010]

Thanks a lot, BigA107.

"No one here on this forum works for DJI. We are all trying to collectively offer advice to the best of our ability." -

Probably you are right, nobody. But your logic has issue. Agree?

"I've got 3 different Phantom3 aircraft and all of them are rock solid with dozens of hours of service. One of them hundreds."

Can you tell the RTH mode situation? Whenever you pressed the RTH button, will it land to exactly home position every time for your three solid Phantom 3 drones, or not? or 5 feet away or 10 feet away or...?

 

[With The Birds]

Thanks a lot, BigA107.

"No one here on this forum works for DJI. We are all trying to collectively offer advice to the best of our ability." -

Probably you are right, nobody. But your logic has issue. Agree?

"I've got 3 different Phantom3 aircraft and all of them are rock solid with dozens of hours of service. One of them hundreds."

Can you tell the RTH mode situation? Whenever you pressed the RTH button, will it land to exactly home position every time for your three solid Phantom 3 drones, or not? or 5 feet away or 10 feet away or...?

If you get less than or equal to 7.8m horizontal GPS accuracy 95% of the time you should be happy- you might get better than that and most people will. You shouldn’t expect better though, that is the official GPS performance. It is nothing to do with DJI.

In most cases you have plenty of time to cancel GPS mode and land manually, I would recommend that as the best option.

The few occasions I let RTH proceed close to landing there is a good chance I would have been climbing a tree or going for a swim. The GPS limitations are well known.

 

[BigAl07]

"No one here on this forum works for DJI. We are all trying to collectively offer advice to the best of our ability." -

Probably you are right, nobody. But your logic has issue. Agree?

Agree? Absolutely not. Please explain how my logic has issue? We do not have DJI employees here at Phantom Pilots trying to steer conversations into a positive spin. While we do try to keep the forum organized, polite, and on track we do NOT steer conversations away from DJI problems etc. If you think otherwise you are 100% wrong.

Can you tell the RTH mode situation? Whenever you pressed the RTH button, will it land to exactly home position every time for your three solid Phantom 3 drones, or not? or 5 feet away or 10 feet away or...?

LOL you're missing the point (literally). The Phantom3 series is using older technology and not nearly as "precise" as newer DJI products. I don't land with RTH simply because I choose to fly the aircraft at all times. Even if RTH kicks in for some reason the moment connection is restored I start flying the aircraft myself immediately. If I do engage RTH to set up a landing (to demonstrate RTH for students) if it comes down within 10 - 15 feet of the launch area I'm more than pleased. As the aircraft is descending vertically for a landing you can still guide it and control rate of decent (to a certain degree and depending on battery level) so it's up to you as the operator to help ensure a precision landing. Keep in mind we are dealing with hobby grade components so precision landing it very difficult especially for older models of technology.

This is 100% personal opinion and nothing more... RTH is an emergency feature and just like any other emergency feature it should be over-ridden as soon as the emergency is resolved. It's not designed as a precision landing aide. It's designed for loss of signal issues and such where you, the operator, is unable to land manually. I teach UAS flight and we teach all of our students to Fly The Aircraft and not trust the technology.

Like any other aspect of this hobby. what works for me may or may NOT work for you.

Regardless I hope you have a resolution to your problem soon.

 

[Pete Leare]

It would be really nice if the title of this thread can be 'modified' to not be as critical of DJI products as the OP seems to be slightly mislead.
I have a P3P and a P3A (as well as a P4P and a Mavic Pro but that's not the OP's interest) - both with several hundred hours on each. No problems whatsoever with either one of them, but I will also add that the few times I have selected RTH (usually only for demonstrating to others as a novelty) I have never actually let it land by itself - I always take control well before it gets to 20' or so, however if I were to let it continue, it appears that it would have been within 10' of it's take off point, which is plenty good enough for me.

 

[gingerbloke]

Does anyone here purchase two Phantom 3 previously? I really like to get other's experience in Phantom 3 product though I saw many internet posts saying that Phantom 3 is really a bad product with terrible services as well.

I have two P3, both have been faultless but I have kept away from firmware updates and I always hand-catch (no dirt/dust/grit anywhere near the phantom or camera). My previous P2V+ was solid but had shell cracks within 10 flights.

DJI products seem to be a lottery - if you never need support they're wonderful little machines. Some users report excellent DJI support but you only have to look at the number of firmware threads here to know it's probably not a DJI strong point.

 

[jgyao2010]

Guys, here is the stats about Phantom products.

On this phantompilots.com DJI Phantom discussion board website, until now,

75% of Phantom 3 users have issues with the product; and 100% people are not happy with
the dji/Phantom customer/technical services.


Phantom 3 Products Services

ianzone bad Bad
pporozin not happy
BigA107 no answer to RTH
With The Birds some issue(RTH)
phantom1972 good
jgyao2010 bad Critically Bad.


Please allow me to calculate out the probability if above is true.

Probablity:
Have some Phantom 3 product issue(s) : 75%
Unhappy with services: 100%

Let me know if something is miscalculated.

Thanks!

 

[With The Birds]

Guys, here is the stats about Phantom products.

On this phantompilots.com DJI Phantom discussion board website, until now,

75% of Phantom 3 users have issues with the product; and 100% people are not happy with
the dji/Phantom customer/technical services.


Phantom 3 Products Services

ianzone bad Bad
pporozin not happy
BigA107 no answer to RTH
With The Birds some issue(RTH)
phantom1972 good
jgyao2010 bad Critically Bad.


Please allow me to calculate out the probability if above is true.

Probablity:
Have some Phantom 3 product issue(s) : 75%
Unhappy with services: 100%

Let me know if something is miscalculated.

Thanks!

You have misquoted me. I said consumer GPS can not provide the precision you are expecting from a phantom 3. There is nothing DJI can do about that.

In the absence of you providing some detail about the issues you have had my survey suggests close to 100% lack of operator (I.e you) knowledge/competence.

 

[Budman]

Miscalculated? yes
Had 4 phantoms and 0% issues so that raises your probability rate
Do you know Zarvan?
Any Children in this Forum??

 

[tevek]

With all due respect, there have been a number of suggestions posted to help you out but you seem less intent on resolution and hopefully flying time, yet have the time to put together abstract statistical info to further some unknown agenda.
Post up what the problems are with your current drone and see if we can help you out.

 

[Budman]

Did we establish exactly WHICH Phantom 3 you have?
Sorry, but I don't want to get on your "list" and not going to read every line of this thread
The $1150 you spent is for 2 phantoms?
And yet neither one works?

 

[Vichian-Bruno]

75% of Phantom 3 users have issues with the product

How did you evaluate this figure?
Do you know all the satisfied and happy P3 owners?

It seems you put too much emotions into this discussion, rather than answering the questions from people who are still willing to help you.
Till today we still do not know what P3 model caused you to open this thread.

 

[jgyao2010]

Stats:

83% of Phantom 3 users have issues with the product; and 100% people are not happy with
the dji/Phantom customer/technical services.

Phantom 3: Products, Services

ianzone: bad, bad
pporozin: NONE, not happy,
BigA107: RTH issue, NONE
With The Birds: RTH issue, NONE
phantom1972: good, NONE
jgyao2010: bad, Critically Bad.
Pete Leare: RTH issue, NONE
Gingerbroke: like a lottery.

NONE means "no comments". So, all "NONE" is not counted.

If anybody does not want to be counted, s/he can be removed immediately from above list.

I do not count NONE, budman.

For Ginger, "Lottery" means that the product is not reliable. Sounds like a negative comments? If so, the Phantom 3 products and services are worse than above numbers.

BigA107 and With The Birds: since you said RTH has some limitation, or RTH is in fact returned around 10 feet away to HOME. Let us assume <5 feet is good. >6 feet has some issues. If your phantom 3 never return home more than 5 feet, you will be counted "good".

So, it is my explanation for "RTH issue". Of course, you can define: it has problem only if the RTH difference > 10 feet. Of course, you can also defend, "it does not bring me any trouble". That is fine since you two are experts in playing drones. However, it may cause others problem. Currently, only phantom1972 is counted "good" - his Phantom 3 never landed more than 5 feet away.

Why I paid so much attention to the RTH issue? because my first drone flied away with about 40% battery and about 150-170 meters away from HOME as I mentioned earlier. Within approximately 40% of battery left, I decided to let the drone be back. Unfortunately, it flied away when the battery level was 10%. The technical support lady could not answer the question until she discussed with other tech person(s). The final answer was that I could not play Phantom 3 in a high mountain. Once the elevation is high, it can possibly fly away.

The second Phantom 3, I explained it earlier. Because the Phantom 3 drone cannot connect to the remote controller. I tried two ways, including that LuvMyTJ posted earlier yesterday, to bind the drone and remote controller. It failed, the drone never fly at all since very beginning. And I sent the video to the technical support team. When you bind remote controller and drone, the remote controller would sound like "Di, Di, Di...". If you did this before, you may know what I am talking about.

Most of you probably never met the connection problem.

Thanks!

 

[With The Birds]

How did you evaluate this figure?
Do you know all the satisfied and happy P3 owners?

It seems you put too much emotions into this discussion, rather than answering the questions from people who are still willing to help you.
Till today we still do not know what P3 model caused you to open this thread.

We know, from the OP, the OP has purchased two P3, both from DJI, with the second one at a 15% discount (we might assume if the same type given it was to replace the original) for $1150. that works out at a retail price of around $622 a piece- safe bet we are dealing with a P3 standard AC here.

Who knows how the first one got lost if it failed to return home from 150m away, it should have been easy to find. We can’t wven guess unless the OP sheds more light on the event.

On the sparse detail available my guess is the OP received a second AC and can’t get it to work because it hasn’t been linked to the AC. Good chance that all we are dealing with here.

 

[Budman]

jgyao2010= bad bad
Two sides to every story
Is there a ticket repair # or actual conversation from DJI?

 

[With The Birds]

We know, from the OP, the OP has purchased two P3, both from DJI, with the second one at a 15% discount (we might assume if the same type given it was to replace the original) for $1150. that works out at a retail price of around $622 a piece- safe bet we are dealing with a P3 standard AC here.

Who knows how the first one got lost if it failed to return home from 150m away, it should have been easy to find. We can’t wven guess unless the OP sheds more light on the event.

On the sparse detail available my guess is the OP received a second AC and can’t get it to work because it hasn’t been linked to the AC. Good chance that all we are dealing with here.

Try following this video tutorial (for linking) and let us know what happens

As to the RTh issue there is no issue from what you have described.

Your survey is meaningless given the sample size. For example, how can 100% of all DJI owners be dissatisfied with the service when it seems most never have cause to contact DJI?

Let’s see if we can get you in the air as a starting point. We can even try and solve the mystery with what happened to the first AC if your interested in perusing it.

 

[jgyao2010]

Did we establish exactly WHICH Phantom 3 you have?
Sorry, but I don't want to get on your "list" and not going to read every line of this thread
The $1150 you spent is for 2 phantoms?
And yet neither one works?

Phantom 3 SE. See my post a few minutes ago.

 

[Vichian-Bruno]

Who knows how the first one got lost if it failed to return home from 150m away, it should have been easy to find. We can’t wven guess unless the OP sheds more light on the event.

That's what I mean, we have not a clue what happened out there.
Some stats about P3 issues and services does not help to answer the question why the first P3 failed and the second does not connect.

What about the video he sent to technical support, what about the flight log?

Just to repeat the problem without providing more detailed information will neither lead to a solution or understand what happened nor bring his blood pressure back to normal level.

 

[Budman]

and still

Phantom 3 SE. See my post a few minutes ago.

nope, don't see it
you'll probably edit it now

 

[BigAl07]

Guys, here is the stats about Phantom products.

On this phantompilots.com DJI Phantom discussion board website, until now,

75% of Phantom 3 users have issues with the product; and 100% people are not happy with
the dji/Phantom customer/technical services.


Phantom 3 Products Services

ianzone bad Bad
pporozin not happy
BigA107 no answer to RTH
With The Birds some issue(RTH)
phantom1972 good
jgyao2010 bad Critically Bad.


Please allow me to calculate out the probability if above is true.

Probablity:
Have some Phantom 3 product issue(s) : 75%
Unhappy with services: 100%

Let me know if something is miscalculated.

Thanks!

@jgyao2010 my advice... don't quit your DAY job.

A) Your numbers are skewed horribly. Taking your #'s from this forum and trying to stretch them across the whole population who have DJI Phantoms is like going to an emergency room and counting the # of Sick/Injured people present and then applying that to the entire population of the US. This is a forum where people go to get help when they have a problem. I'd estimate 98% of our members are here (at least initially) because they had a problem or are trying to research a potential problem. This is a horrible place to gather stats.... unless you don't care about accuracy and only want to skew the #'s in your favor. In that case you've nailed it. You could probably get the same skewed results if you visited the Yuneec forum or Autel or 3DR forums.

B) How in sam hill do you have me listed as "no asnwer to RTH"? Did you even read post #24?

C) Unhappy with Customer Service at 100%? Just like A) above you're pulling your answers from a VERY biased source. Also if you'll do a search there are some people here who have had great Customer Service from DJI. Granted they are few and far between but this may also be because few people will seek out an online "Help/Support" forum to mention how great the vendor's Customer Service is. I know I rarely take the time to go online and mention how great a company is. We kind of expect that and only go online to whine and complain about POOR Customer Service. I'm as guilty as anyone else.

D) Why did you not include me in the Phantom3 Products/GOOD section? Did you see post #8 and again post #18?