A little backstory:I joined my company in December of last year to help with development of their autonomous drone project. They already had the M100 in question when I was onboarded, and I think they bought it sometime in late 2016.Fast forward to last week, where during some simulations I notice a little icon in the corner of the DJI Assistant app. Turns out my drone needs a firmware update. So I go ahead and press the button.Everything seems to be going fine, until the update reached 98% at which point I get an error popup stating "Update Failed, Restart System to Try Again" or something to that effect. Upon restarting the drone, the main blinking LED light refuses to turn any color, and the drone just beeps continually once every 2-3 seconds. Won't connect to PC, won't connect to mobile phone, nothing.The latest DJI Firmware Update bricked my machine.Bummer. I call up DJI and after going through the most basic of troubleshooting with the "tech rep" (did you turn it off and on?), he says my only option is to send it in for repairs. I agree, get the shipping label, and send it off.Fast forward to Monday where I get a $1500 invoice to my mailbox, listing ridiculous things like " Lower Shell" for $22, or GPS lower and upper covers for $1 each, or 2 new motors for $50 a piece (funny, because I was flying the drone the day before the update and the motors were working fine). They even are trying to charge me for the Remote Controller Shell, which has a scratch on it, for $100.https://ift.tt/2BZMxEN, in my mind, this whole thing is DJI's fault. I wouldn't have sent my drone it at all, had DJI not told me I needed to update my firmware. And after seeing not only the $900 for the main control board (which I somewhat expected to have to dispute), but also $600 in irrelevant crap, my head about exploded.I call into support, and not only do they not seem to care WHY my drone is broken, they are actually refusing to change ANYTHING ON THE INVOICE AT ALL!! Apparently, because it is out of the 1 year warranty, the only way to get my drone repaired is to pay for whatever they say I need to pay for, whether there's an issue with it or not, and regardless of if its even relevant to why I sent the drone in. According to the supervisors at the DJI call center, my only to options are pay their ransom, in full, for my drone to work again, or have them send me back the useless piece of junk they bricked. The only semi-technical explanation I can get is "Well there has to be something wrong with the drone or the firmware update wouldn't have failed", which just indicates to me they have no clue whats wrong and are just charging me for whatever they can. Delightful.Has anyone had to deal with something like this in the past? What options do I have here? I just can't believe such a large and prominent company in a growing industry like this would have such piss poor support. via /r/drones https://ift.tt/2wpywuA
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