Modified Your Drone? Here’s How It Affects Your Warranty
Warranty Basics
When you purchase a product with a warranty inlcuded by the manufacuter, or retailer (like us), it's like a promise that the item, as sold, will work as expected for a certain period (usually 6 months or 1 year). But what happens when you decide to play tech wizard and modify it?
Why Modifying Affects Warranty
Modifications are a bit like a wild card - they can introduce unknown variables. Once a product deviates from its original state, it's like trying to guarantee a cake will taste the same after you've changed the recipe. We just can't be sure what the outcome will be.
That is to say, it is no longer possible for the manufacturer or retailer to guarantee that the product will work as intended, as it's no longer verifiable to the manufacturer or retailer that the product has been built to their specifications, and it may not perform the same way. Therefore, it is no longer possible to guarantee that issues which arise with the item are due to a manufacturing or design defect, as there's now an external factor.
But isn't modification considered "normal" for lots of your items?
Essentially, yes. For a large variety of the items we sell, customers will want to modify them - changing the motors or video transmitter on a drone, for example, replacing a receiver, etc. Because of this, we do not believe it to be fair to adopt the typical retailer stance of "You modified it, it's your problem."
However, we also do not believe it would be reasonable to offer warranty for a product for which, if an issue arises, we can no longer be sure that the issue is due to a fault of our own, or of the manufacturer's.
To make claiming for any out of the box easier, we have published a guide on what you can check before soldering components such as a flight controller, as if any issue is found before soldering/modification its often quick and easy to arrange a replacement/repair
Our Approach to Modified Items
Once a product has been modified, it will fall in to one of two categories.
1: Non-Modifiable Products
These are products intended for use 'as-is' – the off-the-shelf, single-unit items. Think of a DJI drone or a battery charger, or similar "single-unit" device.
Warranty Status: If you decide to make any modifications to this, or use not approved third party accessories or batteries then this could invalidate the warranty.
Warranty Status: If you decide to make any modifications to this, or use not approved third party accessories or batteries then this could invalidate the warranty.
Example: You decide to use an unofficial battery, or non recommended propellers with your DJI drone, and your drone crashes. This would not be covered under warranty as the fault is considered to be with the user.
2: Modifiable Products
These are items and components to be used with other parts, and typically designed with modification in mind, like a hobbyist pre-built FPV drone, flight controller.
Warranty Status: we will consider each unmodified component to have their own warranty, as if they were purchased individually, and subject to the terms of an individually purchased component
Example: You change the motors on a pre-built drone, and then the ESC develops a fault, we would consider that ESC under it's own warranty as an individual component. If the issue turns out to be due to poor motor soldering, or incompatible motors, then, per the terms of individual component warranties, that ESC would not be a warrantable case. If, however, the soldering was clean, and the new motors were suitable for the ESC's specification, and there were no other issues with the installation of the ESC/Motors, then we would be able to pursue a replacement ESC under that warranty.
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