Returns & Warranty

Our goods come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. You are entitled to a replacement or refund for a major failure and compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. You are also entitled to have the goods repaired or replaced if the goods fail to be of acceptable quality and the failure does not amount to a major failure.

Nothing on this page limits those rights — this page explains how we make them easy to use, plus the extras we offer on top.

What happened? Pick your situation:

Changed your mind? 30 days, no drama

You have 30 days from delivery to return something you no longer want. What you get back depends on the condition it comes back in:

ConditionStore creditRefund to your card
Sealed — unopened, original packaging 100% of the item price Item price minus 3% payment-processing recovery
Opened but unused — complete, resaleable Item price minus up to 20% restocking (min $10) Item price minus up to 20% restocking (min $10)
Used ✗ No return. Used gear cannot come back for change of mind — not for store credit, not for any fee

“Item price” means what you actually paid for that item — if your order earned a shipping discount, that discount is shared across the items in the order, so the item comes back at its discounted price. Worked example here.

What counts as “used”? Soldered, installed, bound to a radio, flown, wires cut, assembled into a build, or run on battery power — any of these and the item is used, and change-of-mind returns are off the table. We can't resell gear that's entered service as new, so this line is hard and we don't make exceptions. One deliberate exception: a quick USB bench check (plugging a flight controller into your configurator to confirm it's alive) does NOT count as use — we actively want you to test before you build. See before you solder. (A faulty item is a completely different story — faults are always covered, used or not: see the faulty section.)

Store credit goes to your account instantly on approval, never expires, and skips the processing fee — it's the best-value option if you'll shop with us again.

Return postage: request your return from your account and we'll email you a tracked return label at our commercial rates — usually cheaper than the post office, and we both see the parcel the whole way. The label cost comes off your refund or credit. Prefer to post it yourself? Any tracked service to 1/80 Somersby Falls Rd, Somersby NSW 2250 is fine.

Not eligible for change of mind: clearance-marked items, batteries, gift cards, and international orders. (Faulty items in these categories are always covered.)

Faulty or dead on arrival

First: check your order within 72 hours of delivery if you can, and tell us fast — early reports make carrier claims much easier. Couldn't open it straight away (gift, away, weekend build)? Just mention that when you contact us. Your Consumer Law rights are never affected by this timeframe.

Quick checks first (10–15 minutes, not an obstacle course). Email hello@phaserfpv.com.au with your order number, photos/video of the issue, and we'll run a few quick checks with you — 9 times out of 10 it's faster than posting anything. If you'd rather skip the checks, no problem: send the item in for bench assessment instead.

If it needs to come back, you choose:

Option 1 — Advanced Replacement (fastest). Reorder the item now so it ships today, and return the original. Once we confirm the fault, we refund the returned item, your replacement's shipping, AND your return postage — the fault costs you nothing.

Free return trick: reuse our AusPost satchel, write “RTS” on it and drop it in any AusPost box — no postage needed. (AusPost only — doesn't work with Aramex, DHL, Toll, Direct Freight or GO Logistics parcels.)

Option 2 — Return first. Send it back (tracked), and once it arrives and the fault's confirmed we refund your return postage and ship the replacement or refund — your choice for a major failure.

Straight answers on the fine print

  • A confirmed fault never costs you the return — label, RTS, or reimbursement (bank transfer if your card refund is maxed).
  • Faulty-item refunds are always full refunds to your original payment method, including your original shipping. No fees, no store-credit-only — full meaning everything you paid for that item (how that's worked out).
  • If assessment finds no fault or user-caused damage (crash, reverse polarity, soldering damage, over-discharge), a $40 assessment fee plus return freight applies — that's why the quick checks first are worth it.
  • Opened the box, used it for a month, then it died? Still covered — faults don't care about packaging.

Warranty claims (after the DOA window)

We handle every warranty claim for gear we sold — you never have to fight a manufacturer alone. We lodge the claim with the manufacturer or distributor and CC you into the thread, so their tech team talks to you directly with nothing lost in relay, and we stay on it and own the outcome. If a repair is the right fix for a minor fault we'll say so; for a major failure the choice of refund or replacement is yours.

What voids warranty: crash damage, water damage, reverse polarity, incorrect charging, physical damage from incorrect soldering (lifted pads, blobs, bridges, overheated pads), and modifications. USB ports broken by force aren't covered — use a USB extension lead. We check boards under the microscope; we'll always show you what we found.

“But you'll just blame my soldering” — no. The exclusion is damage CAUSED by soldering, not boards that have been soldered. A genuine manufacturing fault — a dead factory joint, a failed component, a board that never worked — is covered even after you've soldered your leads on. That's exactly what the microscope assessment separates: your joints vs the factory's. The checklist below is how you protect yourself (and skip the argument entirely).

Before you solder — five minutes that protects everyone

99% of “dead board” disputes vanish when the board was tested before it went into a build. Make this your bench routine:

  1. USB check first, always. Plug the FC into Betaflight (or the gear's configurator) BEFORE any soldering. If it doesn't connect, that's a clean DOA — instant replacement, no debate. This check never counts against your return rights.
  2. Eyeball it. Look over the board for factory defects — cracked components, bad joints, debris — before you touch it with an iron. Photograph anything odd and send it to us first.
  3. First battery power through protection. Use a smoke stopper, or a current-limited bench PSU (set the current limit low, ~0.5–1A) — either one turns a hidden short from a dead board into a non-event.
  4. Continuity check before power. Multimeter across battery + and − after soldering: a beep means a short — find it before the battery does.

Soldering habits that keep your warranty (and your board) alive: a temperature-controlled iron with a clean, properly sized tip; use flux — dry joints and solder wicking up wire strands are what cause shorts under heatshrink; mask around pads with Blu-Tack or tape so stray solder balls can't roll under components and short things later; tin wires and pads first, then join quickly — holding heat on a pad is what lifts it (and lifted pads aren't covered); keep joints shiny and low — no blobs, no bridges. Unsure on any of this? Ask us before you build — helping you solder it right is far cheaper for everyone than assessing it after.

Wrong item in the box? Our mistake — our cost

Tell us within a few days with a photo of what arrived. Then choose:

  • Advanced exchange: reorder the correct item so it ships today; return the wrong one (RTS trick above = free) and we refund it plus your return costs the moment it lands.
  • Return first: send it back, we credit your postage and ship the right item the moment it arrives.
  • Keep it: sometimes we'll offer you a discount to keep the wrongly-sent item — cheaper for everyone than postage both ways.

Item missing from your parcel? Photos of package + contents, and we'll resend it — for missing items under $25 (when it wasn't your only item) we may refund instead of reship, because postage would cost more than the part.

Lost or damaged in transit

Covered in full on Shipping & Delivery: we lodge and chase the carrier case daily, resend or refund (your choice) if unresolved in 14 days, stat dec for orders over $100, and tampered parcels are remedied on photos + stat dec without waiting for the carrier.

Batteries

LiPos are consumables with hard physical limits, so they get their own rules — all detailed in the Battery Safety & DG guide:

  • Check your pack within 7 days of delivery. New packs should arrive at 3.60–3.90V per cell with all cells within 0.05V. Send us a photo of your charger's cell readout if anything's off — we replace or refund confirmed DOA packs on that evidence alone, nothing to post.
  • Never post a damaged, punctured or swollen battery — it's prohibited dangerous goods. Photograph it, we'll sort the remedy, and dispose of it locally: discharge as far as possible, tape the terminals, and drop it at a battery recycling point.
  • Batteries are excluded from change-of-mind returns (faults always covered).
  • Not covered: over-discharge (below 3.5V/cell), incorrect charging, crash/water damage, or running packs beyond their rated load. Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law always apply in addition to this 7-day check window.

We couldn't supply your item

Very occasionally an item can't be located at packing or was oversold. We'll email you straight away with your options — and you pick:

Multi-item orders

  1. Ship the rest + store credit for the missing item
  2. Ship the rest + refund the missing item
  3. Swap it for another colour/item
  4. Wait for the backorder (we'll give you the ETA)
  5. Cancel the order for store credit (recommended if you'll reorder — we don't get our merchant fees back on refunds)
  6. Cancel for a full refund

Single-item orders

  1. Wait for the backorder
  2. Cancel for store credit (same honest reason)
  3. Cancel for a full refund

We can't split shipments (one order = one parcel), and if we can't supply at all, a full refund is always yours — no fees, ever, when the miss is on our side.

Pre-orders

Pre-order ETAs are shown on the product page and stamped on your order. If you cancel before dispatch: full store credit, or refund minus the 3% processing recovery. If our ETA slips: we'll tell you proactively and offer a full refund, no fees.

Ordered a preorder item alongside in-stock items? We don't split shipments — the whole order waits for the preorder item, even if you didn't clock the preorder note, the ETA, or the "ships together" message at checkout. Want the in-stock items moving sooner? Cancel the preorder line(s) and the rest can go — same pre-order cancellation terms apply either way: full store credit, or refund minus the 3% processing recovery. Missing the note doesn't change the fee — we only waive it when the ETA slip is on us, not on a change of mind.

Clearance items

Items marked Clearance / Final Sale on the product page are excluded from change-of-mind returns — that's how they got that price. Faults are always covered in full on clearance items; any specific flaw is listed on the product page before you buy.

A note on packaging: we sometimes open boxes to photograph products for the site, verify contents against our listings, or measure items for customers. Those products are brand new and unused — an opened outer box alone doesn't mean an item isn't new.

Repairs & service

Our bench handles out-of-warranty repairs, soldering work and 3D printer servicing (Prusa, Bambu):

  • $40 assessment, credited against the repair if you go ahead
  • Written quote before any work — nothing happens without your OK
  • Freight both ways is yours on out-of-warranty jobs
  • Warranty repairs are always free — see the faulty section
  • Repaired items uncollected after 3 months' written notice may be disposed of under the NSW Uncollected Goods Act

How your refund amount is worked out

The short version: you get back what you actually paid for that item — the price you paid after your order discount, not the sticker price on the product page.

Our shipping discount is a discount on your order total, not on any one product — that's what lets it grow with the size of your order. Because it belongs to the whole order, it's shared across every item in that order, in proportion to what each item costs. The expensive item earns most of the discount, so it carries most of it.

When an item comes back, its share of the discount comes back with it, and the rest stays with the items you kept.

The easiest way to see it

You buy a $2,500 drone and a $50 accessory — $2,550 together — and the size of that order earns you $50 off. You pay $2,500.

You change your mind on the drone and send it back. If we handed back the full $2,500, you'd have paid $2,500 and received $2,500 — and you'd be keeping the accessory for free. That discount was earned by the drone that just went home. It can't stay behind on the item you kept.

So the drone takes its share of the discount with it: you're refunded about $2,451, and you've paid about $49 for the accessory you kept.

It's not a fee and we don't keep a cent of it — the discount simply follows the items it was applied to. It's also not something we do by hand: it's how order-level discounts work on every store on the platform.

The rest of the detail

  • Which discounts do this? Any discount applied to the order as a whole — the automatic shipping discount, an order-wide promo code, a spend-and-save. A discount attached to one product (a marked-down sale price, a product-specific code) simply comes off that product and doesn't touch the others.
  • Return the whole order and the whole discount comes back with it — you're square, less any fees or postage set out above.
  • Dropping under the threshold: if returning an item takes your order below the spend that earned the discount, we don't claw it back. You keep the discount on what you kept.
  • GST is included in our prices, so the GST on that item is included in the refund too — there's nothing to claim separately.
  • Restocking and processing fees (the change-of-mind table above) are worked out on the amount you actually paid for the item, not on the higher sticker price.
  • Original shipping isn't refunded on a change of mind. When the fault or the mistake is ours it always is — see faulty.
  • Exchanges use the same figure: the item you're sending back is credited at the price you paid for it after the discount.

Want the number before you post anything? Ask us and we'll give you the exact refund for the item you're returning, in writing, before you commit. We'd much rather do that than surprise you.

The boring-but-important bits

  • Proof of purchase required for all returns (order number, email, or bank statement is fine).
  • Refund timing: approved refunds land in 2–5 business days; store credit is instant. How the amount is worked out.
  • Chargebacks: please contact us before opening a payment dispute — we resolve almost everything within a business day, and disputes lodged mid-investigation only slow your remedy down.
  • We reply within 1 business day or less (Mon–Fri Sydney time) — occasionally longer in sale periods or when waiting on suppliers.
Phaser FPV 1/80 Somersby Falls Rd, Somersby NSW 2250 · hello@phaserfpv.com.au · (02) 4311 9090