Nearly a month for a warranty replacement?

[Pedals2Paddles]

One of the IMUs in my less than one month old Solo died. Ticket was opened to 3DR including logs from the controller. They determined right away that it was a dead IMU and the Solo needed to replaced under warranty. That only took one day, which was fine.

Now they're saying it will take customer service "2-3 days" to send me a shipping label to send it back to them. Seriously? The unit of measure here should be hours, not days, to create a shipping label. And that's 2-3 days on top of the one day that's already elapsed since they determined it needed to be returned yesterday. So then 5-7 days shipping back to them. Unknown number of days with 3DR doing whatever they do. Somehow I doubt it will be quick. Then another 5-7 days shipping back to me after that.

So this Solo is less than one month old. And it's about to be out of service for nearly a month for them to replace it. I have no problem with their ticket system and lack of phone support that many complain about. It's a narrow margin business. And half the complaints are probably operator error. But making a customer wait longer for a replacement than they've even owned the brand new product seems absurd to me. I will now be missing the charity event I was doing some photography for, and frankly missing the entire season of spring.

What I was hoping for, was a replacement shipped immediately while I'm shipping the old one back. Maybe I'm spoiled because that's what Amazon does. If I don't send it back, I get billed for it. It doesn't seem like this is a huge risk since 3DR knows for sure the issue based on the logs. I would probably grumble less if they used 2-day shipping for this and had a quick turn around. A week or so is still better than nearly a month.

@Vu.3DR is there anything you can do about this? Or is this really all 3DR is staffed to handle these days? Given you have the logs directly from the controller, what is the harm in shipping the replacement right away while I send the busted one back? (RMA EX041216208537, Ticket #208537). This would go a long way to boost customer service with very little risk and no additional cost.

/rant

 

[CurrentUAS]

In the end they're not sure what they're getting back even if they have tracking from you that the defective unit is on the way back. Although it is a little odd they said it would take days for a return label....it should not take days to send out a return label. Just be a little patient, it shouldn't take them that long on the shipping there and back. I think it usually gets there before the 5-7 days.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

I totally get that I could be shipping them a load of rocks or an empty box. That's why Amazon (for example) reserves the right to bill you for the replacement product if you fail to return it. I certainly can't expect everyone to do that. I would be content with expedited shipping in both directions, and not taking 4 days to make a shipping label. That would be perfectly reasonable as well.

 

[SteveReno]

I bought mine last July & only had to use there RMA once "Bad Battery"
Took 3 days for them to receive mine & then it only took 7 days for me to have it in my hands. "Shipped from China"
At that time, my guess that they had about 4K of units sold. Now i bet there's 5X that 20K units, so i would expect a slower response time.

Haven't heard of too many RMA problems with 3DR, Matter of fact, 3DR was/is proud of there RMA service.

We were all disappointed in the time it took to deliver our Gimbals, Up to 2 months past there delivery date! Talk about people complaining!
The Gimbals were PERFECT!

 

[Ian [P13]]

I totally get that I could be shipping them a load of rocks or an empty box. That's why Amazon (for example) reserves the right to bill you for the replacement product if you fail to return it. I certainly can't expect everyone to do that. I would be content with expedited shipping in both directions, and not taking 4 days to make a shipping label. That would be perfectly reasonable as well.

You can't bill someone if they cancel their credit card or close their Paypal account, so if 3DR routinely sent out gear without getting the original in first they would suffer from fraud for sure.

I was reading the forum for the white one to read a that guy that had a flyaway was being told it would take 3 weeks just for a decision to be made on whether he'd even get a replacement, never mind the start of the process itself. I know many people with the white ones have to pay the postage to send their gear in too.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Update: Late yesterday, a CSR contacted me with the shipping label, and granted my request to use 2-day shipping. So thankfully they did not actually take 4 days to make a shipping label. I asked for expedited shipping, and they agreed. My complaint was tons of wasted time in the RMA process. They seem to have out performed their gloomy estimates, making it perfectly reasonable now.

Now, for some reason they want me to send them EVERYTHING. Controller, charger, battery, props, etc. That is absurd. I can take the legs off the solo and slide the thing right into a small FedEx box. I do not have packing materials or the time to package up this entire elaborate set of unnecessary equipment. It's an IMU failure. You don't need my controller and propellers. I've asked them to not require me to send all that in. Hopefully they'll continue to be reasonable about it so I don't have to spend all evening shipping this thing.

 

[Marich]

Yep, they always want everything, its standard. It took me a full day to track down the sunshade when they replaced my gimbal!

 

[Jubalr]

You can't bill someone if they cancel their credit card or close their Paypal account, so if 3DR routinely sent out gear without getting the original in first they would suffer from fraud for sure.

I was reading the forum for the white one to read a that guy that had a flyaway was being told it would take 3 weeks just for a decision to be made on whether he'd even get a replacement, never mind the start of the process itself. I know many people with the white ones have to pay the postage to send their gear in too.

This is correct, and I make that statement from first hand experience. I am president of a company that provides high end equipment to law enforcement agencies. For about 6 years we had a policy that allowed departments to call us with a request for a failed component. We would then immediately send out what they needed with a shipping label to return the problem component. For the most part this worked well. But after a while, the non returned parts were adding up to a great deal. And it wasn't really intentional fraud or misuse of the policy, it was likely items lost, forgotten, etc. We would often try to bill the departments for the non return, but that was a whole other problem when you are dealing with payables departments that require pre-approved purchase orders.

 

[Ian [P13]]

Now, for some reason they want me to send them EVERYTHING. Controller, charger, battery, props, etc. That is absurd. I can take the legs off the solo and slide the thing right into a small FedEx box. I do not have packing materials or the time to package up this entire elaborate set of unnecessary equipment. It's an IMU failure. You don't need my controller and propellers. I've asked them to not require me to send all that in. Hopefully they'll continue to be reasonable about it so I don't have to spend all evening shipping this thing.

This is standard, so instead of having to replace the Pixhawk 2, re calibrate it etc they can swap out the Solo completely with a full boxed unit which will be as new, they can't do that unless you send everything.

The Solo goes back in the retail box so doesn't need the legs taking off or anything daft.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

I don't have a retail box to send them. I bought it with the backpack, and it comes in the backpack. Their packing list made no mention of the backpack.

 

[Ian [P13]]

I don't have a retail box to send them. I bought it with the backpack, and it comes in the backpack. Their packing list made no mention of the backpack.

That makes no sense to me as I've never heard of a Solo being sold new without retail packaging...

Looks like it's a US offer, as I can see such a pack on 3DR's website. In the UK we don't have that option....

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

It's now been two days with no response or follow-up to my questions. Earlier in the week, they were managing to send one email per 24hr period. Now they can't even handle keeping up with that. I love the stuff 3DR produces. But I've never seen such inept communication and support. They make Comcast look like model for customer service.

 

[Ian [P13]]

Why not use the Live Chat? It's the green "Chat" link on this page:

Support

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Doesn't function on our network at work. I'll try from home later, but I don't have high expectations for their performance.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Update: I had to use the chat to get anyone to respond. They stopped responding to the ticket by email with numerous outstanding questions. The chat was prompt and responsive, but if not for that, I would still be waiting. I find that unacceptable, and 3DR needs to get their shit together if they want to lead the commercial market. No business is going to tolerate one support message per week on an enterprise product.

Anyway, they provided 2 day shipping to send it back to them, turned it around in 2 days, and used 2 day shipping to send me the new one. I had my replacement in hand and in the air on Thursday last week. This aspect was well executed by 3DR and very happy about that. My downtime was minimal, and I had it with me for an important charity event over the weekend. So their estimates for shipping and turnaround were horribly over-estimated.

 

[PdxSteve]

Update: I had to use the chat to get anyone to respond. They stopped responding to the ticket by email with numerous outstanding questions. The chat was prompt and responsive, but if not for that, I would still be waiting. I find that unacceptable, and 3DR needs to get their shit together if they want to lead the commercial market. No business is going to tolerate one support message per week on an enterprise product.

Anyway, they provided 2 day shipping to send it back to them, turned it around in 2 days, and used 2 day shipping to send me the new one. I had my replacement in hand and in the air on Thursday last week. This aspect was well executed by 3DR and very happy about that. My downtime was minimal, and I had it with me for an important charity event over the weekend. So their estimates for shipping and turnaround were horribly over-estimated.

Enterprise customers have a special phone number and direct access....like we used to...

 

[Carl Zurhorst]

Yep, they always want everything, its standard. It took me a full day to track down the sunshade when they replaced my gimbal!

I SENT THEM everything and they billed me because I had... they said I wasn't supposed to send them everything. Am I in the wrong?

 

[Marich]

I SENT THEM everything and they billed me because I had... they said I wasn't supposed to send them everything. Am I in the wrong?

Likely they wanted everything that came in Solos box, nothing else. Solo itself, battery, props, camera mount and controller...

 

[Chadbobb]

I totally get that I could be shipping them a load of rocks or an empty box. That's why Amazon (for example) reserves the right to bill you for the replacement product if you fail to return it. I certainly can't expect everyone to do that. I would be content with expedited shipping in both directions, and not taking 4 days to make a shipping label. That would be perfectly reasonable as well.

I disagree. It's 2016. I think you should expect EVERYONE to do that. Take my credit card number, send me a new one same day, offer expedited shipping for money. Allow 30 days for return. After 30 days, charge credit card. It's 2016 and this is supposedly an advanced company. I don't want this service. I expect it.

 

[Carl Zurhorst]

I mentioned this on another post but:

I was asked to send the Solo, 6 propellers, the controller, the charger for the controller and the charger for the smart battery back.

I sent it to them in the backpack and with the gimbal attached. Which I wasn't supposed to do. So I guess I was in the wrong. I received the drone in a backpack with the gimbal attached all as one part, so I was naive in not thinking of the gimbal and the drone as two things. I thought of them as a single unit. So yeah, I guess it's my fault. So they're charging me extra to send back the backpack (which I received the drone in) and the Gimbal (which was attached when I received the drone). But they charged me extra to send the backpack and the gimbal back. Which I still think is absurd.