Experience with Qidi Plus 4 and Qidi support
I wanted to share my experience with the QIDI Plus 4 and QIDI support, partly as information for potential buyers and partly because I'd be interested to hear how others would handle this.
I bought a Plus 4 directly from QIDI's German store in July. It arrived towards the end of July, shortly before I went on vacation, so I didn't actually do much printing right away. After only a few weeks of use and maybe a couple of dozen prints with PLA and PETG, the printer developed a serious problem: the printhead seems to lose track of its X/Y and Z position and gets sent to completely wrong locations. It extrudes filament in places where it absolutely shouldn't, even over parts behind the print area at the back of the machine, and the build plate keeps being driven into the printhead. I haven’t modified the hardware or firmware in any way.
So I contacted support, and that's when the troubleshooting marathon started. After a couple of emails, QIDI sent me a new build plate, hot end, piezo sensors and proximity switch. Some of the parts were shipped from their Chinese warehouse, so I had to collect the package personally and pay around €15 in customs/handling charges. And none of this fixed the problem.
After some more troubleshooting, they sent me a replacement mainboard. Replacing it was a fairly involved job, and it still didn't fix the issue. At that point I told them that I wasn't willing to keep replacing components myself. Either they could send me a new printer, or I would be happy with a refund and they could take their faulty printer and all the replacement parts back.
Instead, without waiting for my feedback, they simply sent another package from China containing replacement X and Y motors. That cost me another €25 in customs/handling charges. They also sent me a video showing how to replace the motors. The printer in the video appears to be a slightly different hardware revision from mine, and the procedure basically involves disassembling half the printer.
That was the point where I stopped. I informed QIDI that I would not carry out any more component-level repairs and that I was withdrawing from the purchase contract after several unsuccessful repair attempts. I have to say this has been one of the worst product experiences I've had.
Sending replacement parts sounds like good customer support. The problem is that they don't seem to actually read or process the content of my emails. It often feels like talking to a chatbot from 2019 that is simply working through a standard troubleshooting checklist regardless of the specific situation.
Their solution seems to be sending me one component after another and expecting me to repair an almost-new printer myself until I happen to finally fix the underlying issue. I paid a considerable amount of money because I wanted a finished, working printer. I understand that 3D printers aren't maintenance-free appliances, and I'm perfectly comfortable working on hardware. I've owned Bambu printers for years, which has been a completely different experience. If I wanted to build or extensively repair a printer myself, I wouldn't have bought a finished machine from QIDI.
So after more than five weeks, several replacement parts, a mainboard swap, around €40 in additional customs/handling charges and several hours of my own work, I'm still being treated as if I'm simply in the middle of normal troubleshooting, even though I have formally withdrawn from the purchase contract and requested a refund. QIDI has not yet confirmed whether they will process the return/refund.
I'm curious whether anyone else here has gone through a similar situation with QIDI. Did they eventually agree to a refund or complete replacement, or did support just keep sending more parts? And particularly for anyone in the EU/Germany: how difficult was it to actually get QIDI to process a refund/return after several unsuccessful repair attempts?