I bought a Yuneec Typhoon G from https://www.reichelt.com/ (https://www.reichelt.com/)
only £390 + £5 shipping to the UK, BARGAIN I thought.
It arrived, and I immediately started having issues with the tilt on the GoPro gimbal. It would power up and stabilise the GoPro just fine, but the tilt wouldn't work unless you rebooted the quad a few times... not ideal.
I had 3 flights with the quad, the first 2 times I had to reboot the quad a few times before tilt would be controllable. The third time, tilt just wouldn't work at all no matter how many times I rebooted it.
First port of call? Good ol' internet. Has anyone else had this problem? It appears very few people on the various Yuneec forums have reported this exact gimbal problem. So naturally I called Yuneec UK customer service.
The guy on the phone was clearly reading from a FAQ script.... most of the things he got me to do I had already done off my own back after years of building and flying quads, he was helpful enough but when we got to the end of his script and it still wasn't working he just told me I had to return the quad to where I bought it.
I contacted Reichelt over the phone (as I hadn't made a user account with them, just used paypal checkout) with my order number and told them it was faulty, within minutes I had a pre-paid Parcelforce label to send it back.
Perfectly acceptable customer service so far from both Yuneec and Reichelt, but that's where it stopped.
I packed the quad up (thankfully I still had all the little plastic bags and boxes) and sent it back, I kept an eye on the tracking info and saw it had been delivered and signed for last Monday (27th) so the next morning I sent them an email asking what they planned on doing... was I getting a refund or a replacement?
The next day their reply was: "their return has reached our house. We ask for some patience". No pleasantries, no "dear sir" or "apologies for your inconvenience".
2 days later, still no answer to my question of a refund or return. So I send them another email, asking the same question. Their reply this time: "unfortunately we have the audit of the Manufacturer wait. Once we have more information, we will inform you".
5 days after that, still no more information from them, so I prompted them once more, they didn't reply until the next day: "has/have been sent to the manufacturer for the purpose of repair/inquiry. Due to the fact that we can''t impinge on the manufacturers handling time, we would like to ask you for some patience."
The retailer has had my quad now for over a week and all I've had off them is "please wait".
I just sent them a right snotty email threatening to raise a dispute via PayPal for a defective item. I was under the impression that the retailer usually replaces or refunds the customer, then chases the manufacturer for recompense for the failed transaction.
or is that just a UK thing?
Am I wrong to be annoyed about this?
I like your style. .. write a pissed off e-mail, then come to ask if you should have :D
Does the retailer have some T+Cs? Maybe they cover this scenario.
Certainly not good :(
I will always refund or replace immediately, as you say. I just feel its 'the thing to do' and if I'm honest, its what I expect when buying. It certainly seems a lot smoother when dealing with UK suppliers but that's just my experience.
Hope you get it sorted soon, I feel your pain as I'm going through similar with a Chinese supplier at the moment (?)
Quote from: Steve W on July 06, 2016, 11:58:39 PM
I like your style. .. write a pissed off e-mail, then come to ask if you should have :D
Does the retailer have some T+Cs? Maybe they cover this scenario.
haha, it's how I roll :)
nah, I'm know I should send them a "kick up the arse" letter if all they've given me for over a week is no answers and just "please wait"
I just wanted to gauge people's opinion on whether they expect the retailer to sort you out in the short term and deal with the manufacturer for reimbursement.
After all, Reichelt have many Typhoon Gs sitting on shelving somewhere... they also have my £390, I have neither. Surely it's just more "fair" for them to be down by one Typhoon as opposed to me having nothing?
In the situation where I am being asked to wait and then wait some more, I do open up a PayPal dispute. Nothing happens on the dispute until you escalate it, but it does open up an official dialogue.
Playing devils advocate for a second on what they are doing - it simply sounds like they got it back from you, asked Yuneec what to do, and they said "send it to China and we'll look at it". So from their point of view, they are perhaps thinking they've handled it perfectly.
Of course, from a customer point of view (i.e you) this is absolute crap - you have no concept of how long things are going to take, and what action is going to be taken... there doesn't seem to be any sort of plan here, just a hand off to someone else.
Mate I sent an item back to a chinese FPV company and they did the same to me... but they claimed the item never arrived, eventually they stopped responding and I gave up. 4 months later a replacement arrived... absolutely no contact from them though :o
I've just received an email
Dear customer,
The manufacturer has returned the goods today.
Share it please let us know if they want a credit
or where to send them a free exchange.
Wow, the first "Dear Customer" since this whole thing began. My translation of this Germglish is: "Do you want a refund, or a replacement?"
would anyone disagree?
I replied asking for a refund. Lets see how long that takes.
Hopefully they won't mess you about over the refund! Sounds like they might be trying to hang on to your ££££ though with the word credit.....could be store credit!!!
Quote from: jt on July 07, 2016, 02:19:10 PM
Hopefully they won't mess you about over the refund!
Well thanks for jinxxing it lol
They've agreed to a refund, crediting my original payment method (paypal) but for some reason they've decided to give me a partial refund without telling me why.
£384 instead of £390.... down by £6, odd!
I'm not too fussed like, it's a tiny percentage of the full price but I've asked them why anyway.
Exchange rate?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Quote from: BigT on July 07, 2016, 10:58:38 PM
Exchange rate?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
no, I thought that originally...
It actually states on the transaction that it's a "partial refund" so they've deliberately only refunded part of the payment.
meh, it's done now. I'm happy I can start spending on other things finally
Quote from: BlueFlyer on July 07, 2016, 11:45:14 PM
no, I thought that originally...
It actually states on the transaction that it's a "partial refund" so they've deliberately only refunded part of the payment.
meh, it's done now. I'm happy I can start spending on other things finally
It'll be the shipping to you fee that wasn't refundable.
Glad you got it sorted though.
I sent back a storm osd to china on 2014-06-11 03:32:19 it's been 17879.24 hours and still I left the ticket open haha.
Apparently,
99% of the time, if you ship back in english etc and don't put the return address in Chinese,
It goes in a giant bin at the sorting office as none of the postal workers can be bothered to find someone who can read it.
They replied, stating it was the shipping charge.
Then they refunded it, so now I've got all my money back :)
lol, result :)