A Droneworld ordeal

<p>If you are a current or prospective customer of Droneworld in Cape Town, you may be interested in my recent experience of their horrible customer service. Although there were moments when it appeared that they were finally getting their act together, they soon reverted back to their old ways. Are they irredeemable? I don't know, and I am not planning to stick around to find out.</p> <p>Several attempts to obtain the contact details of the owner of Droneworld were ignored by the staff. This suggests that they want to hide something from him. Can you figure out what it might be?</p> <p>June 2016: Buy DJI Phantom 4 drone from Droneworld in Cape Town.</p> <p>22 October 2016: Drone crash.</p> <p>26 October 2016: Email the details of the crash to Droneworld (Sales) and ask them to advise me on how to proceed in order to determine if the repair will be covered by the warranty and how to get it fixed. They promptly responded (Lee, cc Ashton) and by the end of the day I supp**** them with all the required information, including a set of photos illustrating the damaged parts of the drone, the flight record text file of the last flight from my tablet, and the DAT file from the drone obtained via the DJI Asssistant 2 computer program.</p> <p>4 November 2016: No feedback. Request an update via email to Lee (cc Ashton). This went unanswered.</p> <p>14 November 2016: Still no feedback. Phone Lee to enquire about progress. Lee request that I courier the broken drone to them, which I did the same day.</p> <p>15 November 2016: Emailed Lee (cc Ashton) the courier waybill number. Lee replies back to say that she will call me once the package is received. She never did.</p> <p>6 December 2016: Still no feedback. Phone Droneworld and speak to Alex and request to speak to the owner of Droneworld in order to file a complaint. According to Alex the “owner is on lunch” and would call me back “within the next 30-45 minutes”. My call was never returned.</p> <p>7 December 2016: Emailed Sales, Lee and Ashton to enquire about the status of my drone's repair. Hana (cc Sales & Lee) relies and is “sad to hear what is going on.” She pledged to investigate the matter and come back to me.</p> <p>9 December 2016: Email from Hana (cc Sales & Lee): “We have been having terrible issues with logging DJI drones on the DJI repair portal in China HQ. I have personally been trying to work on this situation over the past couple of days without success. Of course this is not your problem and also no reason why we could not have kept you more informed of the situation which you rightly pointed out.” However, there are also issues within the Droneworld company which most probably contributed significantly to this delay. See, for example, what happened from 9 January 2017 onward when all the responsibilities was on Droneworld.</p> <p>12 December 2016: In my reply back to Hana (cc Sales & Lee) I wrote amongst other things: “Looking forward to regular (weekly) updates on my broken drone, even if it is only to inform me that you are still not able to log it with DJI HQ.” Hana (cc Sales & Lee) replies and “agree ... 100%” with the contents of my email. She also undertook to “ask Lee to keep [me] advised of the situation with [my] drone and together [they] will keep [me] more updated and in the loop.”</p> <p>19 December 2016: Email from Hana (cc Sales & Lee): “Just an update on your drone. On Thursday evening DJI requested your login details to access your app so that they can track what happened. Lee provided that information to DJI on Friday so now we are waiting to hear back from them with their feedback.” Why did it take Droneworld nearly 8 weeks to accomplish this?</p> <p>28 December 2016: Lee emails DJI HQ Technical Support and said that she have forwarded them “everything” I sent her, but “can not get step 2 or 3”.</p> <p>29 December 2016: DJI HQ Technical Support replies back to Lee and request all the flight records on my tablet (previously I have only sent them the flight record of the last flight) and the DAT file from the drone obtainable via the DJI Asssistant 2 program. Subsequently Lee (cc Hana) forwarded their message to me with the message: “Please find feedback from DJI, they are asking you to follow the below steps.” What is troubling here is the following: 1) I have already send Droneworld the DAT file on 26 October; 2) Why would DJI HQ request the DAT file if Droneworld have already sent it to them?; and 3) Since Droneworld had my drone since mid-November, how did they think was I suppose to extract the data from the drone? Nevertheless, I sent Droneworld all the flight records on my tablet and resent them the DAT file also.</p> <p>6 January 2017: Lee (cc Hana) forward DJI's analysis of the flight data to me. DJI's verdict is that I will need to pay for the repair.</p> <p>9 January 2017: I enquire about repair options via email to Lee (cc Hana). Lee (cc Hana) confirms that she would advice me on the time frame as soon as she “get a quote from our technician within the next 3 working days”.</p> <p>13 March 2017: I sent Lee (cc Hana) the following email: “Hi Lee, I cannot complain about your customer service, because it is nonexistent! You said that you would provide me with a quote after 3 working days. Alas, it is now two months later and I have not heard anything from you. For how long are you planning to keep me in the dark?”</p> <p>14 March 2017: Hana (cc Lee) ask for my phone number so that she can call me the next morning.</p> <p>15 March 2017: Hana calls me in the morning to find out, amongst other things, if I have already sent my drone to them! Her call was followed up with an email (cc Lee) in which she offered their “sincerest apologies for the lack of feedback” and confirmed that the drone is with their tech repair centre. She also provided me with a quote for the repair. Her email was sent at 12h15. At 13h29 I received another email from Droneworld, this time from Charlie with another quote which was R55 more than the quote provided earlier by Hana. I responded (cc Hana) by highlighting my experience which clearly indicates that Droneworld is plagued by communication issues amongst staff and between staff and customers.</p> <p>17 March 2017: Charlie apologised and confirmed that the cheaper quote provided by Hana is the correct one. Surprisingly, she also asked me to provide “the details your purchase was made under” as she cannot pick up anything under my name. How is this possible? Apart from the fact that my name appears on my invoice when I bought my drone from them, I also included the invoice number and customer reference number at the top of my 26 October 2016 report on the crash.</p> <p>29 March 2017: I made the payment for the repairs. Receive the following email from Charlie: “Thank you for the confirmation. I have given the technician the go ahead. I have also asked how long it will take. I will advise as soon as I get an answer.”</p> <p>12 April 2017: Due to a lack of feedback (again!), I requested an update from Charlie.</p> <p>20 April 2017: Still no feedback and again request an update from Charlie (cc Hana).</p> <p>24 April 2017: Still no feedback from Droneworld, but received a notification from a courier service of a package on the way from Droneworld.</p> <p>25 April 2017: Six months (!) after I first reported my crashed drone to Droneworld, it was back! At last, I though, my Droneworld nightmare was finally over. But it was not to be, because the Droneworld technician did not replace a broken propeller grip!</p> <p>26 April 2017: Report the issue to Charlie (cc Hana). She rep**** back (cc Khalil, Ashley & Hana) to say that she is “terribly sorry to hear that”, and asked Ashley to assist me.</p> <p>28 April 2017: Receive the following email from Ashley (cc Despatch, Khalil & Charlie): “Good Day Johan , We are terribly sorry for this issue that is with the prop grip. We are not sure as to how would that be damaged as the repair shop never puts props on if not required. May we please uplift the drone from you so that we can have that fixed and shipped back to you all free of charge. You will not have any cost as this is our fault that we will fix. We understand your frustration and apologize about this. We have tried calling you on two occasions but it says subscriber that we have dial is not available. Please may we have your permission to have the drone only uplifted from you. Kind Regards The Droneworld Team.”</p> <p>2 May 2017: My reply to Ashley's email (cc Khalil, Charlie & Despatch): “Dear Droneworld Team,</p> <p>Thank you for your efforts to get in touch with me.</p> <p>Thank you also for assisting me to better understand the operations of your company. More specifically, I am surprised to learn that you did not consider it necessary to do a test flight after a major repair such as was the case here.</p> <p>Even more concerning is the fact that you “are not sure as to how [the prop grip] would be damaged”, thinking that it somehow got damaged during the repair process. This conclusively shows that you are unqualified to handle drone repairs, and that DJI HQ should revoke any certification you may have from them.</p> <p>Apart for sheer incompetence, it is inexplicable how you failed to link the broken prop grip with the initial crash, especially given the obvious damage sustained by the other components, particularly the one shattered 'black dot' propeller. You obviously do not have a functional drone repair system in place, because if you did, you would have noticed in my 'case file' the picture, emailed to you on 26 October 2016, of the broken prop grip in question. Moreover, the broken prop grip should be obvious to any competent drone technician. Unfortunately, the fact that it was overlooked does not come as a complete surprise given the appalling customer service I have come to expect from Droneworld.</p> <p>In conclusion, the prop grip broke during the crash in October 2016. Subsequently it was overlooked by your technician. Consequently it was not included in your quote which listed only “a gimbal, shell replacement and labour.” Therefore, while I appreciate your offer to ship the drone and fix the prop grip, “all free of charge”, you may now want to reconsider your offer, also keeping in mind that I have no confidence whatsoever in your ability to successfully handle any drone repair task; you will never handle my equipment ever again. In other words, unless your new offer entails the shipping of the required parts to me so that I can then do the repair myself, I will not be interested. If I do not hear from you by the end of today it will be assumed that no offer is forthcoming. In either case I reserve the right to order the parts from your competition instead.”</p> <p>In return I received a phone call and the following email from Khalil: “Good Day Mr van Niekerk, Thank you for taking my call today and allowing me to personally apologise for the poor service from Droneworld in regard to your repair. This level of repairman ship is very poor and I have spoken personally with the Repair shop Manager/Owner regarding your case. He admits that his technician did not do the proper quality checks to test the drone before it was released to you. He is updating his check list to ensure that this does not happen again. I am sending the parts to you today. They should be the correct parts according to the Repair Manager. If you still have an issue please email me or phone me. I will do a follow-up call to make sure that they are the right parts for you as well. I respect your decision to no longer use Droneworld based on this experience. I am sorry that we have lead you to this decision. I hope that in the future we will be able to make it up to you one day.”</p> <p>I also received a notification from a courier service of a package on its way from Droneworld.</p> <p>4 May 2017: Khalil phoned me to find out if the package arrived. Later in the day the package arrived with the correct parts — my nightmare was finally over!</p>