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Repair and Yuneec response times?

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Jun 8, 2017
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Have had my Typhoon H for almost a year....shy of 3 days, purchased 6-9-16 and on this past Tuesday, 6-6-17, second flight of evening and the drone is about 270' alt, approximately 240" from myself/controller and it just takes an immediate descend to ground ---crash! Totally messed all props, landing gear, camera, etc.

I issued an email to support, had to call in the next day to get me case # and immediately sent the flight logs and proof of invoice / June 7, 2017

I realize there are people that take advantage of warranties. With flight logs and all the information available, why would it take Yuneec so long to respond or do they have that many repairs to handle responses?
Seems this failed drone is going to be out of commission for quite some time and to me that is not good customer relations. Turn around should be a 2 weeks maximum with the cost of these drones.

Any experiences or have I handled the process as expected?
 
I've had my H for 4 months with no issues...but there are a few people sharing your experience.

I dont like the DJi controllers and heard terrible things about the app...so went for Yuneec. Not sure what to do now for my next model as experiences seem really negative.
 
Your first post and it's about a crashed H and repair facility response times. You do realize there's been a pattern of this over the last couple weeks, yes?

In response to your question, and to review your inquiry, you mention you experienced an incident on June 6, 2017. Counting today that was 3 days ago. You mentioned the event occurred in the evening so let's reduce the timeline to only two days, June 7 and June 8. Today is not over yet. You also stated you sent telemetry and proof of purchase on June 7, 2017 so Yuneec has had one day to review your telemetry, verify proof of purchase, and make an action decision. Personally, I think you are being terribly unreasonable.

From past experience as a UAV technician, one of my responsibilities was to review certain types of UAV crash telemetry to determine probable cause. During the course of a normal investigation I would review telemetry numerous times to find what were often very small clues that helped to determine the cause of an incident. Often that telemetry review would require several weeks of effort because I could not devote 100% of my time to the review. However, even when 100% of my time could be applied to a telemetry review it would often require several days to a week of review before I was assured that all the relevant information was effectively reviewed and assessed well enough to make a determination.

I also had other responsibilities that extended to working with production, research and development, shipping, design, and shop responsibilities. I'm saying my time was not dedicated to just one function, which I presume is the same way things work at Yuneec. Most large companies function in a similar manner, where employees are tasked with multiple responsibilities. An employees time is divided between multiple functions, requiring that time out of every working day be provided for each function. Typically, some functions carry higher priorities than others, and what those may be is dependent on how the employer assigns them.

We also need to keep in mind Yuneec is said to have recently experienced a staffing reduction. Something that is very common to all large businesses. Seems corporations want to make a lot of money but employ as few employees as possible to obtain that revenue. We don't know what the staffing levels at Yuneec were before the staffing reduction, and we don't know what the staffing levels are now. If they were barely adequate prior to the reduction they might be minimally staffed now. But we don't know. However, we can safely presume that each remaining employee now has to do more than they had previously. Because of that each employee likely has less time available to devote to a particular function. Telemetry reviews are time intensive.

Of interest is that telemetry for another crash was recently posted in this forum for people to review. After several days with multiple people looking at the telemetry the actual cause of the event has yet to be determined. Do you think having but one person or so at Yuneec looking at your telemetry for a few minutes each days is enough to find the cause over night? Essentially that is what you seem to expect based upon the time line you provided in your inquiry. Nice thing about Yuneec is they tend to request all telemetry when performing an incident review. I thinks that's pretty smart because they get to develop a sense of system performance over time to help establish cause. Doing this takes longer than a single flight telemetry file.

You could take a few minutes and look at your own telemetry to see if voltage suddenly fell to zero just before your H crashed. If that is the case you might presume you didn't get the battery properly seated before taking off and it fell out or backed out of the battery well. You didn't make mention of airframe condition or provide any pictures to review so I can only guess at a possible cause. You might also review some previous telemetry files to determine how the battery has been performing over time. You said yours is almost a year old so battery condition could be a factor in your event. If you elected to track your battery performance over time you could review those records to determine if the battery had provided data that suggested an impending battery failure. 12 months on an OEM battery is actually kind of a long time and from what I've seen in various forums, is plenty of time for them to have been abused by owners to the point of failure.

Ultimately, I think you expect too much, too soon. Because you can browse the web and get immediate satisfaction in some things does not mean the world reacts instantly to everything. If you get a response in less than a week you'll be doing good. Develop some patience because even if everything goes in your favor you'll be down 30 days or more after you get an RMA to send it back. Two weeks of that time your H will be in the hands of those transporting it, not with Yuneec. That's just the way it is.
 
Last edited:
Your first post and it's about a crashed H and repair facility response times. You do realize there's been a pattern of this over the last couple weeks, yes?

In response to your question, and to review your inquiry, you mention you experienced an incident on June 6, 2017. Counting today that was 3 days ago. You mentioned the event occurred in the evening so let's reduce the timeline to only two days, June 7 and June 8. Today is not over yet. You also stated you sent telemetry and proof of purchase on June 7, 2017 so Yuneec has had one day to review your telemetry, verify proof of purchase, and make an action decision. Personally, I think you are being terribly unreasonable.

From past experience as a UAV technician, one of my responsibilities was to review certain types of UAV crash telemetry to determine probable cause. During the course of a normal investigation I would review telemetry numerous times to find what were often very small clues that helped to determine the cause of an incident. Often that telemetry review would require several weeks of effort because I could not devote 100% of my time to the review. However, even when 100% of my time could be applied to a telemetry review it would often require several days to a week of review before I was assured that all the relevant information was effectively reviewed and assessed well enough to make a determination.

I also had other responsibilities that extended to working with production, research and development, shipping, design, and shop responsibilities. I'm saying my time was not dedicated to just one function, which I presume is the same way things work at Yuneec. Most large companies function in a similar manner, where employees are tasked with multiple responsibilities. An employees time is divided between multiple functions, requiring that time out of every working day be provided for each function. Typically, some functions carry higher priorities than others, and what those may be is dependent on how the employer assigns them.

We also need to keep in mind Yuneec is said to have recently experienced a staffing reduction. Something that is very common to all large businesses. Seems corporations want to make a lot of money but employ as few employees as possible to obtain that revenue. We don't know what the staffing levels at Yuneec were before the staffing reduction, and we don't know what the staffing levels are now. If they were barely adequate prior to the reduction they might be minimally staffed now. But we don't know. However, we can safely presume that each remaining employee now has to do more than they had previously. Because of that each employee likely has less time available to devote to a particular function. Telemetry reviews are time intensive.

Of interest is that telemetry for another crash was recently posted in this forum for people to review. After several days with multiple people looking at the telemetry the actual cause of the event has yet to be determined. DO you think having but one person or so at Yuneec looking at your telemetry for a few minutes each days is enough to find the cause over night? Essentially that is what you seem to expect based upon the time line you provided in your inquiry. Nice thing about Yuneec is they tend to request all telemetry when performing an incident review. I thinks that's pretty smart because they get to develop a sense of system performance over time to help establish cause. Doing this takes longer than a single flight telemetry file.

You could take a few minutes and look at your own telemetry to see if voltage suddenly fell to zero just before your H crashed. If that is the case you might presume you didn't get the battery properly seated before taking off and it fell out or backed out of the battery well. You didn't make mention of airframe condition or provide any pictures to review so I can only guess at a probably cause. You might also review some previous telemetry files to determine how the battery has been performing over time. You said yours is almost a year old so battery condition could be a factor in your event. If you elected to track your battery performance over time you could review those records to determine if the battery had provided data that suggested an impending battery failure. 12 months on an OEM battery is actually kind of a long time and from what I've seen in various forums, is plenty of time for them to have been abused by owners to the point of failure.

Ultimately, I think you expect too much, too soon. Because you can browse the web and get immediate satisfaction in some things does not mean the world reacts instantly to everything. If you get a response in less than a week you'll be doing good. Develop some patience because even if everything goes in your favor you'll be down 30 days or more after you get an RMA to send it back. Two weeks of that time your H will be in the hands of those transporting it, not with Yuneec. That's just the way it is.
That is such a well constructed and rational response. Excellent work PatR. I can relate to the frustration, but always good to hear things from the inside.
 
Thanks for the kind words but saying I did something nice might damage my reputation:)

Nobody wants to experience an incident, and everyone reacts differently to an event when one happens. How they react to it, and how they deal with the situation afterwards, including how they describe it when reporting it to Yuneec and elsewhere, goes far in how things turn out. Regardless of that, things take time and people that expect instant gratification are guaranteed to be disappointed.
 
It's our 'quick fix world'!

Good post though. :)
 
Seems there are some experts here on responses so yes, I will wait and 30-45 days downtime is what I am hearing from others with Yuneec. Just hold on your comments as to judging my expectations and be more polite ---also hold from suggesting that I did something wrong. Believe me when I state...placing $1300 in the sky for a novice is scary and I took every precaution in preflight checks. Also..my battery is practically new...second battery so that was not an issue and the voltage was fine. thanks for your input but I don't need to hear that I am inpatient or expecting more than I should.
 
I just related how things work and suggested checking some things yourself. You're the one that proposed a two week turn around. OTOH, you did right by providing the telemetry and proof of purchase.

I think a lit of people believe $1300.00 is a lot of money for a camera drone. It's a lot, to them, but in the scope of what they get for what they can do they are bot expensive at all. They are actually pretty cheap for what they do. Price out the cost of building a custom camera rig or a good semi large aerobatic airplane and the cost is a lot higher. For many, in this class and price range of aircraft, expectations are too high but overall I think the manufacturers are doing a pretty good job in achieving them.
 
I made a follow up call to Yuneec this afternoon and they have provided a RA and return label for repair. Drone logs did show lost connection, no power failure or out of range issue.

Thanks again for the input and no need for further remarks.
 
wow...PatR you are relentless. glad to hear you enjoy commenting when asked not to..have a great day and thanks again for all you valued knowledge.
 

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