I bought 24 steel screws, waited a week and received 24 nylon screws.
I bought four black prop adapters, the mailing label was printed on day two but then it was not handed off to the USPS for four weeks. I inquired, and got the lovely 'we'll respond in three days". Then my order arrived three days later, no notice or status update from 3DRobotics. Then I prepare for the motor assembly, worked my way through three and the fourth adapter came with the wrong shaft. WTF?
So I contact 3DRobotics and get the "we'll respond in three days", shoot I expect my parts in three days since the order was way overdue. Still haven't heard from 3DRobotics yet. I contact Chris@3DR and get told to contact the Help.
After contacting the CEO of 3DRobotics and not getting this escalated, I realize 3DR doesn't care, they get my money and why should they care about poor customer service.
Buyer Beware
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On the first attempt to fly the drone it operated somewhat normal but then suddenly took off into the air hovered for a while and stopped responding to the controller. After a few seconds it flew away very quickly. Any attempt to stop this action by the controller was off no use as the drone did not respond to the controller.Here is a video of piece of the first flight, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tvQV5ePGxg
I tried resolving the matter with the company 3DR Robotics but I do not feel the matter was properly dealt with and they cannot properly explain why the Drone stopped responding to the controller.
I regret dealing with them. I have started to send emails every day to "help" but what I'm probably going to do is issue a credit card charge-back and claim that it appears to be some kind of internet fraud. What a horrible business model. And frankly, how unpleasant must the actual personalities involved be to look at this problem and just say "F*** 'em."
Even Hobby King isn't this bad.
I will keep this simple and concise. I just spent 2k with them a month ago and I blew a call in last week and talked to a gentleman who told me my question had to be escalated to a tech. If I would email the "help" address and put it ATTN: to his name and he will make sure a tech gets on it right away. This was on 7/11 and I have not hear anything as of today.
The question is not going to make or break me but its the point of the whole thing. And really if someone spends 50 dollars or 5000.00 is shouldn't matter if you have crummy support you have a bad name. I own a couple businesses and I push customer support all the way to the grave. If the question was not put in terms the tech could understand then is should of been responded to in the proper fashion.
If you want steel screws, perhaps a small parts online dealer would have been better.
Specialised vendors are always beter (not to mention often cheaper). Don't know where you are but in all countries there are mech. dealers. here: http://www.smallparts.com.au/ is pretty good for specialised items.
For quick and cheap: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/RC_PRODUCT_SEARCH.asp?strS...
15 pages of screws.. Why to buy screws from 3drobotics? :-)
Just to be fair I have two open tickets with jDrones since May that have never been addressed, and they are both regarding new, to be, purchases.
I really like my drone and its capabilities today but I really just want a drone that can take videos and RTL on a frequent interval. I do like DIY projects and have been an avid large scale RCer for quite some time but quadcopters are going to get better real soon because it's a great idea and bigger companies are going to get involved this year. I sense now that APM 2.5 launched a great idea and suppliers appeased the hobbyists but more reliable drones are coming.
With respect to 3DRobotics motor shaft problem - I just cut the original long one short and screwed on the prop adapter. I also highly recommend that anyone who owns 3DR motors to remove the shaft and grid a flat spot on the shaft where the set screw seats. This allows the shaft to be locked and unable to spin, or not spin, on its own. Screeching motors are due to lose props or lose shafts. If you hear screeching on start up only it is because the shafts or props are kinda loose, continuous screeching is a really loose shaft or prop.
3 days have now transpired and no help reply or parts or anything. It's bad enough 3DR but just do what you say you'll do.
Call Them Forget Email... Everyone wants to email.... People that want something done make the call and follow up with an email as back up. I just spent a few thousand with them and found Chris and his people very helpful on the phone.
I have purchased from Lynxmotion for some of my robotics hardware and they would only ship by UPS. In many cases I had to pay between $8 to $12 for shipping here in the US when making small order purchases from Lynxmotion. Using 3DR's USPS priority shipping I pay around $6 for a similar size order and have my order in three days instead of five to seven when shipped by UPS.
Regards,
TCIII
It should be noted that it's not so much the actual cost itself that's the sign of poor customer service - it's just poor business. What *is* poor customer service is how little regard was given to my concerns, and their inflexibiity to explore slower, cheaper options.
To their credit, they did ask for feedback recently here on this forum, and I did mention the shipping costs again. My concern was echoed by others. Apparently quite a few of us have petty, irrelevant concerns regarding postal costs.
However, the mark of a good company is how they address these concerns. Given the response I got this morning, they are quite happy gouging their international customers with extortionate and flat rate shipping costs, thank you very much.
I'm a capitalist at the end of the day, and no matter what my loyaties are, the wallet tells me to get commodity items elsewhere.
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