Unhappy Phantom 2 Vision + owner

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After getting the drone inI got about 25 hours of easy practice time it did contact the side of the house when hovering and dropped 2-3' and the camera broke off of the gimbal. Contacted dronesetc.com and sent the requested email with photo of damage on June 6. Their quick response by email included:

"DJI has not offered replacement parts for the VIsion+ yet. We are hopeful they will soon as this is a common result of crashes. It's sad to say, but your only option right now is to purchase a new drone."

Finally got in contact with DJI Technical Service in the next days (after several hours of phone attempts ) and they said they did not have the parts either and were waiting for a shipment. Try back in 10 days or so. I called the next week and did get with a Rep who emailed me an RMA # for shipping to the Hollywood CA address which was sent that day. The Rep also stated it would probably be up to 8 weeks for repair (the email said 4 weeks) once it was logged into their system.

An obvious lack of: management, customer service and planning. OK, well see where it goes from here. I'm looking forward to having a working unit again but that repair time is not acceptable for a device with a price tag like that that was less then a month old.

Grounded in Colorado
 
I did a lot of research before buying and while waiting for delivery and like any R/C aircraft if you plan on flying plan on crashing. But enough of the old ******* sayings, my research told me if you have a hard crash with airframe damage you are pretty much out your $1100.00 + dollars. That's why I take every precaution as to not fly close to structures. If you stay away from obvious hazards, you'll likely only crash due to catastrophic issues which I'm trying to educate myself on now. But in this case amigo, don't take this the wrong way please, but I think you should be frustrated with yourself on this one. Best of luck to you.

Joel
 
Sad to say, your choices are either wait until replacement gimbals are available - best price I've seen is $680 - or buy a new one. Replacements are slowly coming into the market and should be more available in the next few weeks. There's a ton of people looking for one, including me. If a Phantom Plus falls, the gimbal takes the hit, whether by actual contact or through the shock of the crash.

They probably could make it stronger, but it would be inevitably heavier, and the people complain that it cut their flight time too much. It's a beautiful piece of work for all it does, but delicate. But that's really the case with any quality gimbal.
 
On the positive you have a lot of good spares, not being a smarty pants here.
 
This is a common scenario with hi-tech enterprises such as cellphone network providers: Create an attractive product, exploit profits from a hot sales market, but spend as little as possible on customer service and support.
 
I have on order the extended, wider and longer landing gear. Does anyone thing this would have helped in this gentleman's type of crash?

Regards,
Joel
 
I doubt longer gear will protect the camera and gimbal, its just way too fragile. The camera doesnt need to hit anything the shock of the crash is enough to rip it apart.
 
JWarren said:
I have on order the extended, wider and longer landing gear. Does anyone thing this would have helped in this gentleman's type of crash?

Joel, I think the longer gear may help avoid tipping over (something I have never had happen) but, in a crash, I don't they will help protect the camera at all. If anything, taller gear are more likely to buckle than the shorter stock gear. Also, if you have a case, then your Phantom will no longer fit. The camera/gimbal is just necessarily light and fragile. Even if the camera doesn't take a direct impact, in a crash it will likely tear itself apart just from the inertia of the sudden stop.
 
I took a chance and ordered this guy's camera guard solution:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=16518
I figure it's light weight, strong as it's carbon fiber, and it will at least protect from the bottom up. If I have one crash and that one rock or obstacle from the bottom causes the phantom to bounce off it or roll away without damaging the gimbal then I say it's worth the $30 insurance policy. I fully understand this solution will not fully protect the gimbal, but it is some added level of insurance...

I'm in Colorado too.. Where in Colorado are you located?
 
stu48 said:
After getting the drone inI got about 25 hours of easy practice time it did contact the side of the house when hovering and dropped 2-3' and the camera broke off of the gimbal. Contacted dronesetc.com and sent the requested email with photo of damage on June 6. Their quick response by email included:

"DJI has not offered replacement parts for the VIsion+ yet. We are hopeful they will soon as this is a common result of crashes. It's sad to say, but your only option right now is to purchase a new drone."

Finally got in contact with DJI Technical Service in the next days (after several hours of phone attempts ) and they said they did not have the parts either and were waiting for a shipment. Try back in 10 days or so. I called the next week and did get with a Rep who emailed me an RMA # for shipping to the Hollywood CA address which was sent that day. The Rep also stated it would probably be up to 8 weeks for repair (the email said 4 weeks) once it was logged into their system.

An obvious lack of: management, customer service and planning. OK, well see where it goes from here. I'm looking forward to having a working unit again but that repair time is not acceptable for a device with a price tag like that that was less then a month old.

Grounded in Colorado

Why would you wanna be that close to a house in the first place? Blame yourself first then DJI.
 
Just inquired about ordering one camera guard myself. An ounce of prevention....
 
chriske said:
Why would you wanna be that close to a house in the first place? Blame yourself first then DJI.
I'm kinda thinking the guy does blame himself first.. and then blaming DJI... and I can't say I blame him. DJI's customer service doesn't have the best track record right now and I can testify to that first hand. I'm actually surprised he was able to get ahold of a technician after 3 hours on the phone. A month or so ago I needed to call their tech support and was constantly disconnected and not even afforded the queue to wait.. then I waited in the queue and got disconnected after a couple hours wait. In addition to that, I never got a reply from my email sent weeks prior. As i've said before, I love the product, but I dread the thought of having to deal with their customer service anytime in the near future...
 
About longer landing struts...

In my short time flying I have learned that the easiest / best way to land is to hand catch it.

Here's how you do that: Bring her down to about 6 feet, facing away from you. Walk up, grab the right back strut, and hit the off button with your thumb, twice. Done.

I thought it would take two people, one to catch and one to turn off the motors, until I figured this out. There is no reason to ever land conventionally again and it's much, much safer for the Phantom.
 
phantomguy said:
Or just grab strut with right hand and use left hand to hold throttle stick down for a few seconds
+1000
And:
use lanyard so you have a free hand.
stop recording first. Sometimes I forget and power down the unit it results in a corrupt MP4 file.
Make sure you're looking at the battery and all switches on the transmitter are In up position so you don't confuse the orienteering.
Reach up to catch. Eye or head level is a NO NO. Make sure wind is behind you and phantom in front so if a gust of wind hits, the phantom moves away from you and doesn't give you a new buzz cut.
Careful that you don't grab the compass. It looks sensitive.
 
Tails_Up said:
About longer landing struts...

In my short time flying I have learned that the easiest / best way to land is to hand catch it.

Here's how you do that: Bring her down to about 6 feet, facing away from you. Walk up, grab the right back strut, and hit the off button with your thumb, twice. Done.

I thought it would take two people, one to catch and one to turn off the motors, until I figured this out. There is no reason to ever land conventionally again and it's much, much safer for the Phantom.

I've done this after every flight except for the very first day of practicing.

I tipped over on one landing that first day, then had a bunch of successful practice landings after that.

But I decided that landing wouldn't work in most of the locations I want to fly with sand or jagged rocks on the ground.

Grabbing it from the air is easy and feels safer when there are other people around or pets.
 
Thanx for all the replies. The suggestions for extended landing gear and other things were noted and positive. Also interesting were the comments from the 'experts' who criticized me for having an accident.I'm sure that has never happened to anyone else :lol: While I was absolutely responsible for the occurancet, my whole point is to make people aware of the lack of support from a company selling products that it can't support in a timely manner. (Give a call to customer support and see how long it takes to get to a rep). Hopefully it will give people a second thought of buyer beware rather then just blind trust from company doing mass advertising. The industry is just getting started and there will be many changes along the way. I'm absolutely sure that with a little time competition among the manufacturers will eliminate the ones that can't support the products they sell. Happy Flying to all
 
Well I think everyone on this forum knows of that lack of support. Until recently you didn't even have a number to call ! It's a disgrace , sorry to here of your problems. Just a expensive way to learn.
I was lucky I started with a F450 which is a lot tougher with crashes.
 
Do not blame DJI's customer service. DJI doesn't want to do it that way. But it is the overwhelming number of calls pouring in and flooded everywhere, there is no way for them to handle this kind of flood in a short term. If you want a better service, pay twice as much so that DJI would have enough funds to hire and train more people to serve their customers like you! The vision + is a high end product and should not be flew by a newbie. US Air force is not stupid enough to let new pilot just graduated from aviation school to fly a F22, a 3-hundred-million dollar machine. You should do the same: start with something similar and cheaper and tougher.
 

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