What a sad news like this!
- Thread starter wjc777
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where is the dronedj article on how dji missed the launch of the mini 3? is dji late with that drone and not going to launch it until 2022 or will they be given a pass because they simply didn't announce it to make people think they are always on schedule? maybe autel should forgo the announcements and just depends on leaks to get the message out?
or maybe autel should go ahead and release the nano/lite before it is ready, before some of the main features are fully tested, and then shift the firmware update delivery to 2022 so they can say they launched "on time" even though they robbed the customers of some of the best features and don't mind having customers begging and sending emails every week asking "is it ready?" or "when will we get new firmware to fix....?"
waiting until your warehouse if completely filled with enough inventory to fill the channel before making a product launch announcement is a poor marketing strategy. it might work for some products but not for drones, in my opinion. a new drone launch announcement in february will fall flat and is ineffective. especially when it's a drone in a new category that you anticipate your competitor will launch a competing product in at the same time. certainly i would not have said anything today knowing the launch is not until february but if you thought it could happen within 30 days....
both the nano and the mini 3 are likely "late" because they are trying to get obstacle avoidance right. neither of those drones can launch without nearly perfect obstacle avoidance. imo skydio set the standard and if you are going to seriously play in this space, your drone has to come big with it. people expect these drones to follow you practically anywhere and figure it out when put to the test and they put these drones thru ridiculous situations. if you dont want your drone to crash, you need to go back and revisit your work and make the necessary improvements even if it takes months. what will not fly is saying your not as good as skydio or this isn't an action drone or follow me is not it's primary role.
or maybe autel should go ahead and release the nano/lite before it is ready, before some of the main features are fully tested, and then shift the firmware update delivery to 2022 so they can say they launched "on time" even though they robbed the customers of some of the best features and don't mind having customers begging and sending emails every week asking "is it ready?" or "when will we get new firmware to fix....?"
waiting until your warehouse if completely filled with enough inventory to fill the channel before making a product launch announcement is a poor marketing strategy. it might work for some products but not for drones, in my opinion. a new drone launch announcement in february will fall flat and is ineffective. especially when it's a drone in a new category that you anticipate your competitor will launch a competing product in at the same time. certainly i would not have said anything today knowing the launch is not until february but if you thought it could happen within 30 days....
both the nano and the mini 3 are likely "late" because they are trying to get obstacle avoidance right. neither of those drones can launch without nearly perfect obstacle avoidance. imo skydio set the standard and if you are going to seriously play in this space, your drone has to come big with it. people expect these drones to follow you practically anywhere and figure it out when put to the test and they put these drones thru ridiculous situations. if you dont want your drone to crash, you need to go back and revisit your work and make the necessary improvements even if it takes months. what will not fly is saying your not as good as skydio or this isn't an action drone or follow me is not it's primary role.
No surprise there at all. Everything is "late" right now due to parts shortages, shipping delays, world wide pandemic, etc. I hesitate to even call these things late...they are simply a result of the current state of the world.
The Nikon Z9 just released and there are hints you won't be able to actually get your hands on it for up to a year from now if you did not get into the pre-order. The Canon R5 was out of stock around the world for months after its release date and the R3 will probably suffer the same fate. Entire products aren't even being brought to market and are being removed from roadmaps due to how severe the parts shortage is.
And lets not forget, these products are still developed by humans; who knows how many times they have had to shut down due to outbreaks or delays due to hospitalizations/sickness of critical personnel.
^What Ken said.
DroneDJ, while generally a decent news source, is consistently frustrating with its coverage. The bias is essentially in the name. The tiniest bit of remotely DJI info, no matter how dubious or sketchy, gets lots of "wow!" type-airtime and other OEMs will have launches of drones or major accessories, and then they're the only site that somehow misses them until someone has to point it out. They somehow never miss the bits where they can sensationalize 'bad' stuff about DJI competitors though (AUTEL ADDS GEOFENCING! article and imagery as one example).
Some of the more recent autel articles you see only appeared after myself and others had to repeatedly send tips of the same things, only to be ignored, and it took multiple feedbacks about how their bias, perceived or otherwise, doesn't help them or our industry/hobby long term. That's just silly honestly, we shouldn't have to do their job to have a centralized, high visibility source to go for news.
Skydio is also doing a lot. DroneDJ claims to be the experts in drones, but somehow they usually only have sparse content on their products after its already been on The Verge or other drone sites for several days.
Lately I've been better off on getting a more complete picture from Captain Drone, Ken Heron, others on YouTube rather than DroneDJ.
DroneDJ, while generally a decent news source, is consistently frustrating with its coverage. The bias is essentially in the name. The tiniest bit of remotely DJI info, no matter how dubious or sketchy, gets lots of "wow!" type-airtime and other OEMs will have launches of drones or major accessories, and then they're the only site that somehow misses them until someone has to point it out. They somehow never miss the bits where they can sensationalize 'bad' stuff about DJI competitors though (AUTEL ADDS GEOFENCING! article and imagery as one example).
Some of the more recent autel articles you see only appeared after myself and others had to repeatedly send tips of the same things, only to be ignored, and it took multiple feedbacks about how their bias, perceived or otherwise, doesn't help them or our industry/hobby long term. That's just silly honestly, we shouldn't have to do their job to have a centralized, high visibility source to go for news.
Skydio is also doing a lot. DroneDJ claims to be the experts in drones, but somehow they usually only have sparse content on their products after its already been on The Verge or other drone sites for several days.
Lately I've been better off on getting a more complete picture from Captain Drone, Ken Heron, others on YouTube rather than DroneDJ.
It would be nice if someone from Autel could give us a shipping date and stick to it - a lot of orders are in... - ever since the product announcement over a month ago it's gone completely quiet.
I'll give it another week or so before the usual you-tubers start bashing Autel about their premature announcement - Time for a public update Autel...if you're listening.
I'll give it another week or so before the usual you-tubers start bashing Autel about their premature announcement - Time for a public update Autel...if you're listening.
The issue I have with Autel is communication - we should not be finding out from 3rd party vendors that shipping wont start until February 2022 - this should be coming directly from Autel. Shame on them for not doing the right thing and letting others deliver the bad news. I can understand delays - what I cant accept is willful silence when they had opportunities to get in front of this.
I love my EVO 2 Pro - but as of right now a third party vendor is sitting with my $1,000 until maybe sometime in February - I'll likely ask for my money back until I'm satisfied that Autel is being honest - a lot can happen in 5 months - the seller could go out of business and then I'm out $1k.
never give your $1,000 to a merchant without getting a product delivery guarantee or your money back. honestly, i have to believe you are in the 2% while the rest of us 98% of the pre-orders are on solid ground. you can't expect autel to cater to the 2% do you? i agree with you completely, i would never handle this financial transaction the way you did. personally, i would ask for your money back today and then let us know if you need advice or information on how to get off shaky ground and how to handle pre-order 101 business. and then you can focus on the real issues rather than if you're going to lose your shirt. no wonder you're making a big stink out of it, i would be too if i gambled away my money and i stand to lose $1,000. this is indeed self-inflicted. /s /s /s
You're missing the point - Autel should be telling us the expected shipping time frame - but they don't. They're also not doing their loyal distributors any favors here either.
Oh...If a seller goes out of business good luck with that guarantee. One thing you are right about is that I will cancel my order and wait to buy when I'm confident Autel actually will have something to ship within a reasonable time frame - it would be nice for them to announce when that will be.
Yes, there's no way I'd put any money into a pre-order from anyone for anything right now. I have never pre-ordered anything to begin with but with the current state of the world even if I made it a regular habit, there's no way I would do it at the moment.
I am with @kenautelevo2pro I would immediately ask for a refund and wait until they are actually shipping. I agree Autel should have communicated better but no matter what Autel or any vendor says these days; until it is actually in stock somewhere I'm not buying it.
Fair point - I ordered from a reputable seller - I probably jumped the gun on this one but at the time I ordered the seller was saying November / December (I could live with that) - Then it was late December / early January...Now it's February. I don't blame the seller. Autel should step up and say something. I dropped a note to Autel's Marketing Department stating such.
dji didn't tell anyone the launch date until they launched. they kept people in the dark for months with several false (unofficial) starts. but of course, they leaked and hinted at the mavic 3 about a month in advance. maybe autel will tell us more as they get closer. or maybe they decided not to but instead tell the "loyal distributors" who aren't supposed to say just yet. if i were going to be super late, i wouldn't want anyone to know that until later. this is the thinking and i didn't make this up, i've heard this from "people."
on october 1st, you make it known you intended to launch a product very shortly; most likely 30 days.
on october 20th, you find out you can't make that date and in fact, your new date is march 1st.
1.on november 1st, if you tell everybody that you are sorry and regrets, you can't launch and in fact, the delay is until march 1st, your company will feel the pain for 120 days.
2.on january 1st, if you tell everybody that you are sorry and regrets, you can't launch and in fact, the delay is until march 1st, your company will feel the pain for 60 days.
which one would you do, #1 or #2?
btw, this is the sarcastic switch: /s
sorry i didn't mean for you to cancel your order but instead place a pre-order the responsible way. i see from your profile you are 55 y.o. c'mon man companies going out of business don't take your money with them anymore, this is 2021, not 1991. c'mon. lol
put your pre-order on a credit card. the guarantee comes from the provider, not from the merchant. there are thousands of pre-orders every year, surely you know what i'm talking about, right? pre-order is all about risk. it's not risky but the goal of every financial transaction is to minimize your risk and maximum your gain and in this case, the gain is being first in line and helping to ensure you get the product when it is available.
#1 - I don't care about DJI or what they do or don't do - I care about Autel. I tell everyone I come across what a great product they have and how my drone photography can stand next to my DSLR (Nikon D850) - I'm a nature photographer 1st and a drone flyer second. Autel has the best camera in it's class hands down. This is the reason that I sold stuff to order the Nano + (To use it for close in work that I cant do with the larger EVO 2 Pro) - because on paper the camera was far superior than anything DJI had to offer in this class. I also don't care about active track or any of the automatic flight modes that either DJI or Autel offer. I fly manual 100% of the time to make sure my moves, angles and framing are as perfect as possible for what I'm trying to capture and create - same with my photography.
My EVO 2 Pro does the job for me and I'm extremely happy with it.
When I order photography gear I know what I'm getting from Nikon or Sigma and I have a high expectation of performance and quality for what I'm paying - and I pay a lot for that.
In this case I pre-ordered with the expectation of getting my hands on the product in a reasonable amount of time - I could live with waiting through October, November and although I wasn't thrilled I could live with December. Keep in mind that Autel hasnt said a word anywhere yet about what's going on - that's the first red flag I should have picked up on.
I find out today that most 3rd party sellers are going out with an unconfirmed date of February 2022 - really?? that's 5 months from when I put my order in - and I'm still being strung along...and still no word from Autel.
Here's the thing - I no longer trust Autel to deliver on what I ordered in a reasonable time period. I wouldn't be surprised if they delivered the Nano + sometime in July or maybe August of next year - My $1,000 isn't waiting that long.
I've spoken to 4 other friends of mine who do similar work that also pre-ordered the Nano or Nano plus and 3 of them are also cancelling and the 4th will give it a few more weeks to see what happens.
I also sent an email to Autel's Marketing department asking them to do what other reputable businesses do and put out a public statement as to what the situation is - that's what a good company is supposed to do.
sorry to hear about your frustration, i understand the difficulty with waiting. sometimes it feels like forever and nobody has time to waste because time is money. especially this year 2021 and last year, 2020 nothing has gone well, the delays have been extra long, and for the most part the explanations are unsatisfactory especially when it is blamed on the pandemic. people just don't want to hear it any longer and i don't blame suppliers who can't bring themselves to continue to blame covid for everything. i have no idea what problems (if any at all) really are so i agree with you that autel should at least say something even if it means more waiting because as you said the customer comes first (not dji). still, i believe 30 days is reasonable and the way i have been handling the situation is just to have a tiny bit more extra patience and give it just a little bit extra time. i don't blame you one bit for not wanting to wait a day longer than end of year december and since there are choices out there, you vote with your dollars. keep in mind that we all placed pre-orders (not orders) but if these were orders, certainly all of us would be very unhappy. to me, the pre-order has a little more flexibility but shouldn't be abused. pre-orders are a thing only because decades ago, the anger was focused on when are you accepting orders and how to make sure i get scarce product. i have a nano plus on pre-order. the nano plus is going to be amazing whenever it finally comes out and while i would hate to wait until summer, personally i'm going to give autel the benefit of the doubt since i'm already aware they are usually late and the struggle is real for them. good luck and let's hope that one date i've seen (11/30) is real.
Autel has been a little coy about the ship date since the initial announcement of the Nano and the Lite series of drones. B & H has had the February date on their site since they started taking preorders last month so its not exactly news.... just DroneDJ stirring the pot.
Vendors here have indicated they expected to see shipped units in November / early December and I see nothing in this news item that changes that possibility. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the ship date slips to February or beyond. Autel obviously felt pressured to drop information on their new drones ahead of the DJI Mavic 3 release so its very possible the new drones aren't ready. The only thing worse than a shipping delay would be to launch these new items half baked.
The other part that could be bad news for Autel is that with the complete list of Nano / Nano+ specs released, DJI could be quietly working on a Mini 3 with competing specs to be released in the February / March timeframe. I believe that DJI already had a Mini 3 ready to launch with very limited upgrades other than added obstacle avoidance.... the Nano series has likely forced them to rework the Mini 3 design and add more tech to compete.
Vendors here have indicated they expected to see shipped units in November / early December and I see nothing in this news item that changes that possibility. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the ship date slips to February or beyond. Autel obviously felt pressured to drop information on their new drones ahead of the DJI Mavic 3 release so its very possible the new drones aren't ready. The only thing worse than a shipping delay would be to launch these new items half baked.
The other part that could be bad news for Autel is that with the complete list of Nano / Nano+ specs released, DJI could be quietly working on a Mini 3 with competing specs to be released in the February / March timeframe. I believe that DJI already had a Mini 3 ready to launch with very limited upgrades other than added obstacle avoidance.... the Nano series has likely forced them to rework the Mini 3 design and add more tech to compete.
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I just wanted to clarify something. When a preorder is placed with a reseller the preorder money does not go to the manufacturer or distributor until the product ships. Manufacturers and distributors do not invoice the resellers until products ship. Even in this crazy time of long backorders.
Also just because some guy has a “drone news” site stating that a reseller has a ship date on their site for a product, doesn’t mean it’s an official release date from a manufacturer. Manufacturers are all over the place with their delivery forecasting right now and with good reason. It’s really hard to get parts that are sitting in co trainer ships for months. Trust me, they want to ship products ASAP so they can get paid ASAP.
Also just because some guy has a “drone news” site stating that a reseller has a ship date on their site for a product, doesn’t mean it’s an official release date from a manufacturer. Manufacturers are all over the place with their delivery forecasting right now and with good reason. It’s really hard to get parts that are sitting in co trainer ships for months. Trust me, they want to ship products ASAP so they can get paid ASAP.
Hi Richard!
We never gave a release date. It was an announcement.
If you followed the nano comment that was a day prior to the announcement. No where has AR given a solid shipping date.
We will announce shipping went the units are ready.
Thank you.
does anyone know how accurate b&h has been in the past when it comes to launch dates?
This was posted this morning from Autel:
Our factories are running at full speed right now to meet the production goals and we should be seeing vast quantities of EVO Nano and EVO Lite series arriving in the United States by December.
We are also in the process of letting our dealers know the new product timelines, now that we have the update from our engineers and factories.
Our factories are running at full speed right now to meet the production goals and we should be seeing vast quantities of EVO Nano and EVO Lite series arriving in the United States by December.
We are also in the process of letting our dealers know the new product timelines, now that we have the update from our engineers and factories.
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