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Poor Customer Support, Crash warranty denied

I really believe that sky to you as a company is just a hot air balloon, a bunch of hype to raise their valuation in the eyes of unwary investors.

I had a Skydio 2 from the first batch. I took a bite of about $2000 on a start up company that couldn’t even give me a reasonably accurate delivery date or expected delivery date or even tell me where I was in the queue.

Of course this raised my suspicions.

I’m a real estate photographer and wanted the Skydio 2 for those up the driveway and into the front door shots.

I was impressed by their no crash guarantee and by that video that showed the S2 flying autonomously through very dense Woodland.

The impression I got after watching that video was that if the Skydio 2 could do that, it surely could fly up the driveway and into the front door of the home.

My expectations were cut short when flying down the driveway with me just 10 feet behind it, it hit a small branch and crashed to the ground. The lighting was excellent and the small branch wasn’t minuscule, I just Didn’t see it myself.

Skydio declined the no crash guarantee claiming that hitting a small branch isn’t covered by their no crash guarantee. Can you believe that?!

I had to pay for replacement drone

Since that time, I’ve had numerous problems with the Skydio 2 Drone. Among them problems connecting, problems disconnecting, a gray screen instead of a video feed at times during a flight that was not recoverable and finally at a recent shoot, I took the images off the microSD card and imported them into my editor, Lightroom. Every image was bright red as if I had a dark red filter over the lens. The images were unusable and unrecoverable and I had already left the shoot when I discovered this, obviously.

Worse yet, the support people told me that this was a known problem and they were working on it. If it was a known problem, all users should’ve been made aware of it so they wouldn’t use the Skydio for an important shoot only to find after the opportunity was over that the images were ruined and unusable. Even if this red image issue was an occasional problem, the drone would be unusable for any important shoot because sometimes reliable is the same as unreliable. Users would simply not have used the Skydio drone until the problem was resolved and proven resolved.

That was the last straw.

To make a longer story short or shorter, Skydio agreed to refund my full purchase price on everything including the enterprise program.

I don’t want to even hear the word “Skydio”again.

I might say that it took about two weeks after they received the product back to issue the refund.

I’ve been a drone photographer for three or four years maybe a little longer with thousands of missions with DJI drones starting with the phantom three when it first came out.

Now, my go to Drone is a DJI Air 2S.

I’ve had all kinds of Mavics before that including the Mavic air two, the Mavic pro two or is it the Mavic two pro, and usually had no problems aside from there poor customer support. But their product works, at least for me, all the time, and I’m not going to stray from the path.

That’s it from me!
Was your crash the result of a failure to heed a Skydio warning?... looks like it.

Do you take any responsibility for the crash? ... sure doesn't look like it.

Would ANY other company (especially DJI) still give you a FULL refund?...not a chance.

Are you at all grateful to get all your money back? ...Not in the slightest.

Signed,
.. a three time DJi owner that's converted to Skydio with no intention of ever looking back.
 
When you talk about if I heeded the warning there were no warnings from the Skydio and it was flying very slowly probably 2 miles an hour, a slow walking speed with me 10 feet behind it and under it. I always use the controller for the drone and never use my phone or the beacon. The drone was about 6 feet over my head on a descending driveway. I obviously did not see that it was flying close or into a branch. And as far as I’m concerned when one looks at the fly through the Woodlands video, one would think, any reasonable person watching this would think that obviously it avoided small branches, leaves and twigs.

I never asked for the refund. But they very generously offered it and I am very appreciative. I will say that I had offered it for sale and had many offers to purchase it for more than my purchase price including shipping. I actually would’ve preferred to sell it to somebody so they wouldn’t have to wait for something they wanted rather than the hassle that I had to go through with the Skydio folks and not to mention the failed to deliver shoot with the red images.

You are correct, I don’t think DJI would’ve made such an offer however DJI doesn’t claim to offer a no crash guarantee and they very careful about limiting or telling a pilot of the limitations of the obstacle avoidance feature of their drones. They don’t show or produce or have I seen produced from anyone else, a video of a DJI drone flying through a dense forest, not to mention, autonomously!

So I’m glad that my Skydio story is over and I’m very happy with my DJI Air 2S which I really didn’t have to wait to get delivered to me, didn’t have to wait a undetermined period of time.

I guess in retrospect I should’ve followed my instinct and cancel the pre-order when they couldn’t even give me a general idea of when it would be delivered and then repeatedly delayed a delivery date that was never even specifically stated to begin with.

Like I said, I believe this company is more hot air and wishful thinking

finally, yes, I do agree that no drone that I’ve ever heard of has the quality of active tracking in extreme situations as the S2, does however it’s not tracking that was my issue. My issues were limited to false promotion of the no crash guarantee and failing to disclose a possible known killer problem with the red image issue so that professional photographers could not find themselves with unusable images after a one time event shoot.

Thank you for your comments
 
If I were to receive a full refund I would feel obligated to unsubscribe from the forum.

Personal experience shows DJI has “real” killer tendencies in autonomous flight.

As far as misleading advertising all the manufacturers participate, Skydio is as close to reality IMHO.

Search some older DJI ads for misleading adverts they’re there.
 
If I were to receive a full refund I would feel obligated to unsubscribe from the forum.

Personal experience shows DJI has “real” killer tendencies in autonomous flight.

As far as misleading advertising all the manufacturers participate, Skydio is as close to reality IMHO.

Search some older DJI ads for misleading adverts they’re there.
Thanks for your comments. You are not me. I've never had a "game stopper" with DJI. Yes, the Chinese (not all but DJI for sure) have a "different perspective" on veracity and of how to provide great customer service. And, as I've said, I started back when the Phantom 3 was the latest product. I've had everything from Phantom 3 to Inspire 1 V2.0 to Air2S and everything in between. I expressed my personal experiences and person opinions. I am really not interested in discussion of my experiences with Skydio. I don't fly my DJI products autonomously.

Be well and stay safe.
 
I've owned virtually every consumer DJI drone since the P1, but that is not an indicator of knowledge.

I find debating with Phanboys a futile task, I'm not suggesting you are one.

The S2 is a high performance sports drone aimed at experienced pilots IMO, no drone is foolproof. Some level of care and respect for the obvious is mandatory.

If this we're some fly by night, hot air company we would not be seeing the hundreds of impressive videos on a daily basis; nor would major players take such an interest.

DJI is great for real estate and other less demanding situations; Skydio is good at what it does.

DJI works for you, Skydio works for me. You won't find me on DJI forums bashing these days, I did at one time when it was apparent DJI marketed unsafe drones.
 
When you talk about if I heeded the warning there were no warnings from the Skydio and it was flying very slowly probably 2 miles an hour, a slow walking speed with me 10 feet behind it and under it. I always use the controller for the drone and never use my phone or the beacon. The drone was about 6 feet over my head on a descending driveway. I obviously did not see that it was flying close or into a branch. And as far as I’m concerned when one looks at the fly through the Woodlands video, one would think, any reasonable person watching this would think that obviously it avoided small branches, leaves and twigs.

I never asked for the refund. But they very generously offered it and I am very appreciative. I will say that I had offered it for sale and had many offers to purchase it for more than my purchase price including shipping. I actually would’ve preferred to sell it to somebody so they wouldn’t have to wait for something they wanted rather than the hassle that I had to go through with the Skydio folks and not to mention the failed to deliver shoot with the red images.

You are correct, I don’t think DJI would’ve made such an offer however DJI doesn’t claim to offer a no crash guarantee and they very careful about limiting or telling a pilot of the limitations of the obstacle avoidance feature of their drones. They don’t show or produce or have I seen produced from anyone else, a video of a DJI drone flying through a dense forest, not to mention, autonomously!

So I’m glad that my Skydio story is over and I’m very happy with my DJI Air 2S which I really didn’t have to wait to get delivered to me, didn’t have to wait a undetermined period of time.

I guess in retrospect I should’ve followed my instinct and cancel the pre-order when they couldn’t even give me a general idea of when it would be delivered and then repeatedly delayed a delivery date that was never even specifically stated to begin with.

Like I said, I believe this company is more hot air and wishful thinking

finally, yes, I do agree that no drone that I’ve ever heard of has the quality of active tracking in extreme situations as the S2, does however it’s not tracking that was my issue. My issues were limited to false promotion of the no crash guarantee and failing to disclose a possible known killer problem with the red image issue so that professional photographers could not find themselves with unusable images after a one time event shoot.

Thank you for your comments
A parting thought....

Its obvious you went into the Skydio purchase uneasily and that you feel
hoodwinked about the decision from the very beginning.

Buyers remorse usually doesn't end well so its good that you took advantage of Skydio's get out of jail free card.

If nothing else, whats happened will make you a better pilot.
 
Its obvious you went into the Skydio purchase uneasily and that you feel
hoodwinked about the decision from the very beginning.
Yeah, nothing they did was right except for the refund. What gets me is Skydio is continuously compared as a company to DJI which has 14,000 employees despite skydio only having about 250.
 
The refund is astonishing. You were batch 1. I am batch 1 and I can’t imagine a refund even being a possibility. I’ve crashed my Skydio several times. They’ve all been user error because of my overconfidence in this drones capabilities. I take risks with it. Overall, it has impressed me on several occasions. It wears its scars proudly. I have a few scratches on optical lenses and it still manages to carve its path through it’s created world. I love this thing, but I’m sad we’ll probably never see another for public consumption….
 
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In this video at about 14:00 I lost sight of my S2 when it was behind me just above ground level. I pushed the "-" button to bring it in closer and my S2 navigated over and around the bushes, many with small bare branches. Maybe I was lucky but after a couple hundred flights like this I think it's more than luck.

 
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I don't think that was lucky ether. How fast were you cruising along at shortly after that? Asking because it didn't rise up as speed increased, same thing I see if it has room to operate. We're fortunate, desert is an ideal flying location.

I'm impressed by all the technical details you're sharing while navigating the trail.
 
If I get above about 15mph it starts to rise so I slow down to bring it down. When going up an elevation it seems to stay lower AGL; I have run 25-30 mph and it doesn't rise as much.
 
Sorry for the loss but I agree with skydioconvert and Ridefreak; small branches less than 1/4" without leaves can be seen, poor lighting- all covered in the manual.

We all want to place full trust in technology but it has limits and we have to be reasonable. I crashed my own S2 due to my own negligence and had a good repair experience(although some say that is changing).

As far as DJI, that is where class action suits should be, not Skydio.
4 crashes 4 malfunctions paid $800 for the Premier Care . Each took over a month of arguing and debating . Was ignored had to re do the claim to get a hold of the. One time . Each time prior to me sending the follow up email that goes with the flight log they had already deemed it my fault so no warranty.
Each time they replaced the s2 they stated I shouldn't be flying at 38% battery life . ??????????

And they never once took care of me like thr Premier packages states.

And now 5 I am fighting with them on a 5th malfunction . S2 in cable made 2 fight same set up in cable and on the 3rd one clipped a branch. I initially thought it veered from the pre set path but after going frame by frame it started its pre set flight at a different coordinate and flew a different path not the one it was supposed to.
They can jot show me it didn't malfunctio. And have tried continously to find other ways to not replace it over and over again
My dji has coordinates and show distances on the screen I flew the set path sent them this just to show them no thresholds on the OA were breached in the path and there were no bbjects to go around.

Still fighting with them they have the worse customer service.

It too 2 weeks fro them to tell me they don't sell C to C connectors for charging
And this is 20 emails in on this question.
 

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