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Anafi Drone Flew away and Parrot tried to blame me for it

munkyy

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This is Parrot on a whole. Their Customer Support Sucks. They Lie, they tell you that someone will get back to you, or they will "personally update you themselves" but never do.


I had a similar situation occur in August of 2019 about 5 days after purchase. The first unit died citing Vertical camera failure. That grounded the Drone. Sent that back. The second drone that same week, first 2 short flights were okay. Those flights the drone flew up to 200 feet. The distance of around 800 or so feet from take-off. No problem. 3rd flight, after all the preflight checks, compass calibration, set return to home point, GPS locks, it took off, got it up to about 258 feet, about 300 feet north, not an obstacle in its path, clear skies, all of a sudden I get a warning from the app GPS lock went red, I tried to return it back to me, but noticed that the left thumbstick stopped controlling the drone.

The next moments got increasingly scary... Saw the drone starting to take off in the opposite direction to me. I hit the RTH button on the controller, then the app said lost connection and crashed about 1 minute after that... At this point, I am confused and bewildered at what I just witnessed. My 700 + Drone just flew away on its own, and I don't know where it went.

I called Parrot support and asked them to help me locate the location of where the drone is or where it landed, they asked me to fill out a form, and send them logs and details. This BTW is absolutely no help when the customer is on the phone waiting for a response on where my drone is, not helping them in that first call to provide them with any information is absolutely terrible. They said they would call me back within 24 hours after they received the information, I sent them that info inside of the hour from that call. NO one called me back!!!!

I called them back and asked them the status, all they told me was that they got the form and that it would be processed and they will update me.

Here comes the waiting/stalling/outwait game... Day by day, I call in after that, asking for an update, every call they assure me that they will update me "Personally" and each time they fail. a few days later I finally get a response back that they are forwarding my claim to the claims review department and are awaiting a decision on potentially replacing the drone. I am excited now to know that they may be taking care of me based on this obvious malfunction.

Only to have them come back and deny my claim... The first denial was because "this was a user error, and that I did not do the pre-flight checks to ensure that the drone was in operation" I asked them how do they know that I did not do these pre-flight checks? They claimed they had the logs and saw that it was not done... Confused, I asked them how they determined this, they go on to explain to me that the flight data that I shared in the app allows them to see the flight data. When I look at the app and the flight data, I notice that THERE WAS NO FLIGHT DATA!!! When I called them back and explained this, they said they would reforward this information to the department again and see what they say.

More waiting, more following up, more stalling... Citing Processing, still waiting, I call back in and finally get a verbal update, they said that the claim was denied again, based on the fact that I was flying in an unsafe location... I asked "What unsafe location???" They said they will email me the flight data from the flight, and mentioned that there was a reported crash from the device before the device stopped reporting. And also that the drone is within 25 feet of where it took off from.... Still confused, I asked them what time did this flight occur that you are talking about... They cited 12 PM or so Paris time... I respond to the guy 12 PM Paris time is 6 AM my time Eastern... AT no time did I ever operate the drone at 6 AM in the morning. Their response was Oh yeah this was eastern time.
I asked them how can they report that there was a crash when I know for certain that there was no crash, plus the time they were citing was the prior flight to the one that the drone actually flew away… And funny enough I had the footage from that flight, so I submitted that footage as proof that what they were telling me was inaccurate. There as NO crash in that flight and the drone landed safely.

They said okay we will forward the request over again…. The waiting and stalling tactics again, calling in, each time, the rep promising that they will update me personally, and call me back… Not once did they ever call me back. I called back in and asked to have a manager call me back and speak to me because this is ridiculous.

I spoke with the manager 3-4 days later, and he said he will try to speak to the claims department about the claim. I call back 3-4 times after this, the 5th time I call back I get an approval for the replacement. They told me to ship my controller to them and they will issue the replacement within 7-10 business days.

7-10 business days came and went. It is now October and I am STILL waiting for an update on why it takes so long to ship a replacement when I can purchase one from almost any retailer without a problem right now.

Outside of the fact that this Drone malfunctioned seriously on me not once but two times (two separate drones) and the fact that the customer service is more equivalent to a telephone answering service that provides absolutely no help what so ever, they ridicule and lie to customers trying to shame them and making them feel like they did something wrong, when it was their crappy software/hardware failures that caused the issues their customers are facing, the drone itself is terrible. It feels like a toy, and I am not the only one who has had their drone fly away seemingly on its own.

To frame this up a little better, if you bought a self-driving car, that had a return to home feature for safety, and you told that car to drive to work and come back home and park in the driveway, and that car never came back home, you would think there would be a class action lawsuit down the pipeline.

It seems that Parrot does not care about their customers, not even to support them or make them feel like they even care about them after they purchase their products. They just keep selling inferior products based 2.4/5 GHz wifi connectivity that can even fly past 1.5 KM.

And when you tell them that their drone lost communication with the controller they blame you and tell you that you should not have flown the drone in an “Urban Area”

Are you kidding me???? So then don’t sell a product to anyone in an urban area, or put a warning label on the front of the box.

This has been a pain ever since I decided to give their product a try. I have only actually had about 12 minutes of flight time on their drone since I purchased in August, and since then I am still waiting for a replacement. Only now they are citing supply shortages or shipping problems…

I moved on the DJI Mavic Pro 2 and never looked back. Not 1 single problem on that drone since I got it. And the Mavic Pro 2 Always returns home every single time.

Do yourself a favor and spread the word, Don’t buy Parrot products. Stick to the leaders in the field or build your own.
 
I had the ‘falling out of the sky unexpectedly’ issue after updating the firmware. Spoke to Parrot support, who eventually said because there was no flight log, they were denying my warranty claim (I had included the SD card contents). I responded that that wasn’t acceptable and they have just ignored me ever since. Other things in my life have made me not able to follow this up YET. But I.

So yes I agree Parrot support suck big time. And from what I have read here, I think many would feel the same. Just have to stick with it and wear them down.

Stephen


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Never had a single problem; I have not and will never crash my drone.

On landing it sometimes didn't recognise it and the blades kept spinning. So I called parrot. They asked me to send some logs which I did, and they gave me a warranty approval so I could just return it at the place of purchase and get another one.

Great service and they were very helpful.
 
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Parrot support has become increasingly poor over the 4 years I have used there prducts however, I still have more flights on Parrot then all my DJI and Yuneecs combined. I will most likely be first inline when they come out with another model. They have some of the best software integration I have seen without any add ons. There service is "C-" (it used to be first class) I hope they survive. I am on my 5th Anafi still what I fly the most.

I have had two Mavic 2 Zoom the first one had to be sent back because when RTH was pressed it went in the other direction. The new one I just received a few weeks ago is fine. Problems can occur with any complex system. DJI is smart they listen to there customers in the same time span of 4 years I have seen DJI support become first class and Parrot go downhill. Parrot should take a lesson from DJI and offer CarePaks for replacement I carry them on my Inspire 2 and Mavic 2 and Mini. My mini flew away and need replacement DJI did not cover however, when I flew it into tree and totalled it it cost 49 cant beat that.
 
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