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Report: #1499753

Complaint Review: DJI - Shenzhen Guangdong

  • Submitted:
  • Updated:
  • Reported By: Sam — Arlington United States
  • Author Confirmed What's this?
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  • DJI Shenzhen, Guangdong China

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DJI evades responsbility of cost of repair after its faulty firmware/flight controller directly caused high-speed out-of-control crash of drone flying it 56+ mph into a tree during a forced autolanding mode!

On August 29th of 2020 I flew my DJI Mavic 2 Pro on a bright sunny day, little to no winds, perfect conditions. Soon after takeoff I noticed that DJI Mavic drone started acting erratically, I have previously flow hundreds of flights before and had never had any issues. A few days prior to this the DJI app had forced me to do a new firmware update before allowing me to fly. This was around mid August. On this particular morning (Aug 29th) a few moments after noticing the aircraft behaving erratically it somehow entered into a forced autoland mode by itself, even though I was not inside of any NoFlyZone nor had I breached any altitude restrictions... I had flow at this same location dozens of times before in the past months and exactly the same route and never had any issues.

Soon after I noticed the Mavic going into a force autoland it did something else totally unexpected... I saw the propellers clearly in the liveview screen on my phone (DJI Go app) and knew right then and there something was very wrong, the Mavic had pitched itself at an ungodly angle (more than 45 degrees it seemed) and the props were in full view of the screen, and as I watched it in the sky, I saw it zooming by at extremely high speeds flying past me at what seemed to be almost 60 mph and then away from me uncontrolled and uncontrollable... any and all of my attempts to stop the undesired movement was blocked/unsuccessful and in mere seconds it crashed into a tree at very high speed before crashing into the ground and breaking to pieces having inflicted severe damage.

Subsequently I contacted DJI support and detailed these events and provided DJI with both the flight record and the raw flight data logs as captured by the DJI drone itself.

Sometime later DJI told me to send the drone back to them for analysis and repair...

However after had sent it, some days go by and when I finally hear from DJI, they stated that because I did not buy their DJI Care insurance they are refusing to even analyze the data and refuse to determine what happened to the aircraft, and subsequently their logic is that because they have no analysis to prove they were at fault (due to them refusing to analyze the data in the first place!) they are now holding my drone hostage until I pay their ransom money so they can then "repair" their own flawed drone just to send it back to me!

Subsequently I analysed the data myself using available data analysis tools and determined and proved beyond any reasonable doubt that this that in this case it is the 100% fault of the DJI, to wit: it is the total fault of the DJI Mavic's firmware bug which caused an out of control event that forced the drone to fly erratically against user control and beyond normal flight permitted characteristics, ultimately resulting in a hard crash causing significant damage to the drone itself.

The logs show that subsequent to the Mavic's imuYaw re-initialization a critical firmware bug caused both IMU's fail simultaneously and locked one motor keeping it's revs constant way above the rest for no explainable nor logical reason as a result caused the Mavic to fly out of control at excessive speeds of 55+ mph whilst in forced autoland mode (thus refusing any inputs from the user/pilot) and directly causing and directly resulting in a very damaging uncontrollable crash at high speed into a tree.

The root cause of this incident was on a level above the IMU, as the evidence shows, this was can only be explained by a defect in the firmware and/or in the flight controller itself, in both/all instances, this definitely falls on DJI to repair or replace at DJI's cost!

After having replied back and sent DJI all the evidence and analysis based on that evidence, DJI has so far refused to accept responsibility, and refused to repair or replace at their option and cost, and is still holding my $1600+ USD drone hostage until I pay them the ransom money!

 
Forensic hashes of the flight logs data:

< T:\20-08-29-09-18-19_FLY056.DAT >
  MD5: C6EAB26A7200B298DC470166FAAD0A2A
  SHA-1: CE71C8B13CACFAF50B89B19434638F0541CC0CE5
  SHA-256: B10199201A1DFA18C31C6CA2EF375C8BB213C98141889279031D42068CA19F84
  SHA-512: 4C4AD4895CA779A7838381E6D13146F44608D13539E7F48E0F567D1DD57845AC48677B0A127E9D63A3C686FAEA4D145C1D585043A55E139C1FF7E1800ADCA112

< T:\DJIFlightRecord_2020-08-29_[09-18-40].txt >
  MD5: 6B967FD0706208FE6E0A4D4D57BA3461
  SHA-1: 4A11E3F7445D9390FD5C7B9C675FF341979D71CF
  SHA-256: 29D3E9967C5FCD77B8CC7707B145C9D7362722E6B785122230C3D5FDCB0F6925
  SHA-512: 21150D2695D048C2B25FB05BF89E9E0E26EE6D0F377EFA22C76BF60F09592933B50A2632CE10C1922A3A2A320250F657CA0CEBAA0F6019B83E8FD6E1F385C30A
 

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 09/11/2020 02:53 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/report/dji/shenzhen-guangdong-evades-1499753. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
1Author
1Consumer
0Employee/Owner

#2 Author of original report

DJI forced post-sales (after sale) flawed firmware updates as condition of usage, which direct causes hardware damage, then evades responsiblity by illegaly hiding behind "warranty" excuse!

AUTHOR: Sam - (United States)

POSTED: Wednesday, September 16, 2020

This is NOT an EXCUSE!!! Especially when it was DJI itself that FORCED a MANDATORY UPDATE of the firmware on the Mavic 2 Pro that DIRECTLY CAUSED the Out-of-Control High-Speed-Crash which damaged the drone hardware. This was a forced mandatory update that occurred Post-Sales, After-The-Fact, therefore the manufacturer undertakes all responsibility with regards to defects in the update itself that obviously caused a crash that damaged hardware. DJI is the maker/manufacturer in this instance of both the physical hardware, and the onboard firmware, and the software (DJI Go app) that is used to control/controlling the drone flight itself.

This is different than if under the hypothetical scenario that I went out and purchased a bunch of parts and individual components and built a PC desktop as a gaming machine from scratch. In such a scenario it would be less clear and it would be more unclear as to whom was at fault if a critical system error occurred, since the motherboard, the CPU, the individual components and the Operating System software itself could be from completely different vendors, manufacturers and/or companies. In this circumstance DJI is responsible for the entire stack, the whole package, from hardware to firmware to software to the way these components and aspects integrate and coordinate (or fail to coordinate) with each other/ one another.

Additionally, when I go and buy a car, from Toyota or any other reputable car maker, I am not forced to perform monthly "updates" in order to continue to drive my car! This is not the way it works, so for DJI to unilaterally impose these after-sales/ post-sales restrictions so that the user has to be forced to do these mandatory updates in order to continue to effectively use a product that they have already bought and paid for, or else he/she would not be able to fly something they already purchased post-sales, then legally DJI cannot have its cake and eat it too, it cannot be both sides in favor of DJI, in the sense that it cannot do it both ways, DJI is the entity that forces users to perform these updates then DJI is responsible for any subsequent crashes that are directly caused by flaws, detects and/or bugs in these firmware and/or software updates that invokes these kinds of erratic behaviors. This happened immediately after the latest forced updates, the data and evidence has proven beyond any doubt that this was not attributed to user error, the user was using this product normally and flying in perfect optimal conditions and this was something erratic, completely out of control crash, never should have even happened at all, it was caused directly by defects in the DJI product itself, post-update, after the latest forced update.

DJI forces users to update in order to use their product they paid for post-sales, then if the update directly causes a crash, then DJI must be responsible for fixing regardless of warranty because the time/clock starts after the introduction of the latest flawed update itself, not from the original date of purchase. The warranty calculation should only start from the original date of purchase if DJI never forced mandatory post-sales firmware updates (which caused the crash in the first place) as a condition of continued usage after the user brought and paid for the drone.

When DJI unilaterally binds the end-user to forced updates as a strict condition to the continued effective usage of the product then the legal responsibility and product workmanship accountability directly falls onto DJI itself. If post-sales, after a consumer has brought and paid for a DJI drone, the DJI drone crashes at high speed into an obstacle and suffers severe hardware damage, and it was an out-of-control crash in otherwise perfect flight conditions under normal usage and circumstances, and the crash itself was proven to have been the result of erratic behavior with root cause of stemming from the latest firmware update that DJI forced upon the user and mandatory imposed as condition of continued usage onto the consumer post-sales and after-the-fact, then DJI and only DJI solely and completely bears full responsibility for a crash/damage that incurred under these sets of circumstances, regardless of 'expiration of one year warranty', this is expiration was made invalid at the time that DJI introduced NEW flawed firmware updates by force that resulted directly in an immediate subsequent crash as proven by the evidence in DJI's own Mavic logs!

Given the totality of the evidence presented and the indisputable fault of DJI as evidence by the recorded flight data/logs/etc we demand that DJI do the right thing in this instance and repair or replace or offer voucher or refund to correct for and amend for this fault of DJI and to take responsibility and be accountable in the ways that it does business.

Logs and evidence uploaded at Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/download/dji_at_FAULT

 

 

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#1 Consumer Suggestion

Out of warranty

AUTHOR: Flint - (Afghanistan)

POSTED: Tuesday, September 15, 2020

I think they made it pretty clear that the reason they are denying your claim is because the drone is not under warranty.  As such, why do you think they should repair it free of charge, even if it failed due to a defect?  If you want that kind of continued service, pay for a service contract.

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