Hi
I experienced the failure of the drone during a first not even flight but take off when it got 3 meters high and then suddenly just fall to the ground like a stone on January, 14th.
I've contacted the tech team to resolve the issue and then after sending them a log file of the drone they just stopped to answer my emails and requests.
The last update was on April, 14th and since then I've sent them maybe 5-6 emails but still no response.
It is the worst experience with customer service that I ever had.
Imagine buying a drone and not being able to fly since JANUARY.
Reading through a high quantity of very similar posts (and experiencing something very similar myself from a component failure point-of-view), I am horrified that the penultimate manufacturer of drones (DJI is still top of the heap) treats people who choose to spend large amounts of their money on products... a significant proportion of which are unreliable to begin with... with such contempt. For the life of me: I can't understand how the hell they are still solvent.
As far as the United States are concerned: I think what it will take is for a group of people who have similar problems and issues with support to get together, seek legal advice from a really frothy ambulance-chaser and pursue a class action suit.
If a piece of merchandise is clearly not fit for purpose: you have legal recourse. Worst case scenario is that Autel Robotics will cease selling their drones - while that leave all of us with our arses hanging out in the wind: at least people wanting to buy drones from that date onwards won't end up facing this as an ongoing situation that will never be resolved.
The Autel dog has now got the proverbial bad name and has done next to nothing to reverse the situation. Standardised manufacture should guarantee the quality and reliability of a product BEFORE it leaves the factory. A product that fails should be the exception and not the rule: and product failures SHOULD be addressed immediately. A happy customer will come back and spend more money in the future. Piss people off by taking their money and then ignoring them and you're making sure you lose a long-term source of future revenue. Bad business sense unless you've got a 'Fire-Sale' mentality which means you're not planning on HAVING a future.
The problems and failures I have read about so far seem to revolve around certain components, mainly motors, gimbals and batteries all across the Autel range. I think it is clear that these parts are obtained and/or fitted through third party sub-contracts and that those third party suppliers/assemblers don't give a damn about quality control.
I wonder how much more of what makes up an Autel drone is put together through a successive chain of outsourced assembly? Outsourcing might be cheaper, but if you do this: you might design a silk purse: but the chances of you ending up with a pig's ear is a lot higher unless you really have your foot on the neck of the sub-contractors.
I know this doesn't address or solve your own situation, but a high percentage of us are or have been in a similar boat already. Some of us get proper resolution: but a lot more don't and it is just a crap shoot as to who draws the lucky ticket. It's wrong, it isn't fair and these products aren't cheap Chinese toys sold out of suitcases on street corners - something you pay a buck for and expect it to go goofy, or break. There are people on this forum who have forked out for Autel Enterprise class products that fail outright: go wild half way through a flight, crash into lakes and have all the reliability of a circus clown's car... that's a VERY big buck to pay for something that ends up as a paperweight.
