I purchased a
Nano Plus drone on Ebay in January, 2023. The drone malfunctioned two weeks after I purchased it. I contacted Autel Robotics and they sent me a prepaid Fedex mailing label to send it back to them for repair. After a few days I contacted Autel customer support and they informed me that since I bought the drone on Ebay that it was not covered by their warranty. The drone I purchased on Ebay was brand new and in the original shrink wrapped box. Autel then told me that I would have to pay a $450 repair fee, which I did. Autel then sent me a new replacement drone in the new, shrink wrapped box. When I took the drone out for its first flight I noticed that the unit was damaged. I then contacted Autel support about the defective unit and they sent me another Fedex shipping label and I mailed the defective unit back to Autel. When I contacted Autel again they informed me that they had checked the unit before shipping it to me and that it was in perfect working order. I did not damage the unit. The unit was defective. Autel then informed me that I would to pay an additional $420.93 to repair the unit. I have never experienced such dishonest customer service in my life. I am out almost $900 for something that I originally paid only $650 for on Ebay. I always thought that there was something called an implied warranty in California. This kind of blatant consumer abuse is just plain wrong. Worst customer experience I've ever had in my life. Autel Robotics is garbage.
You should never buy any high end electronics off of eBay, it is rare that an eBay seller is an authorized retailer for a product; my drone camera is the cheapest camera I own and every one of my cameras had to be bought from an authorized seller for me to have any warranty coverage. Between the scams, counterfeits, and knockoffs, I haven't bought anything from eBay in years. I don't even trust Amazon when buying camera bodies and typcially go to a retail outlet or the two biggest camera online retailers (B&H or Adorama).
For the second unit they shipped to you, if it was damaged in transit then you could have filed a claim with FedEx, you did not mention what the damage was, if it was physical damage that was visible on the shipping materials then FedEx would have been liable for the damage.
As far as an implied warranty goes, I am definitely not a lawyer but typically my understanding is that an implied warranty only applies in the states that have them if there is not an express warranty. In this case Autel does have an express warranty which is listed
here. The big problem here is their express warranty only applies to purchases from authorized retail channels as stated here:
For users who purchase products through Autel Robotics' official authorized channels under normal use, Autel guarentees that the purchased product will be free of defects in materials and workmanship during the warranty period.
So yes, it is very easy to say Autel is the bad guy here but in reality they have already done more than any other camera maker would have done after finding out you made your purchase from eBay. Canon, Sony, Panasonic, BMD, etc. would have all done the same thing if they even let you ship the camera to them. It is too late now but what I would have done was 1) not purchased from eBay, and 2) if a purchase from eBay was defective I would have used
eBay's money back guarantee to return the drone to the eBay seller instead of contacting Autel. The reality is, you had no warranty from the minute you purchased the drone from eBay and Autel probably sold you at cost the second
Nano Plus which possibly got damaged in transit, but when you filed another claim for a third
Nano Plus which also did not have a warranty, they denied your claim because the interaction was costing them more than they would be able to recoup by sending you another drone at cost.
I won't hesitate to call out any vendor's terrible customer service, and most of the bad customer service posts on here I agree with, but in this case I actually see Autel bending over backwards to attempt to accommodate you before just cutting their losses.