GoPro just issued a press release announcing the recall of the Karma drone. It just happened to be while the United States is watching the election results roll in. The press release is below. Customers can view return instuctions here.
The Karma drone was on the market for 16 days and GoPro says it sold 2,500 drones thus far. All of them are recalled.
GoPro says a power loss malfunction is the reason for the recall though it won’t say how many experienced this error. We found several incidences where consumers experienced irregular behavior by their Karma but it’s hard to say the exact cause was power malfunctions.
“Safety is our top priority,” said GoPro Founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman in the released statment. “A very small number of Karma owners have reported incidents of power failure during operation. We have moved quickly to recall all units of Karma and provide a full refund while we investigate the issue. We are working in close coordination with both the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Federal Aviation Administration. We are very sorry to have inconvenienced our customers and we are taking every step to make the return and refund process as easy as possible.”
Coincidently, I published our Karma review this morning after spending a couple weeks with the device. I found it a capable, predictable, but dated drone. The Karma is a great drone on its own, but lacks the latest features found in competitive drones.
This couldn’t have came at a worse time for GoPro. Last week, the company announced it missed revenue expectations by 23% in its latest quarterly earnings. This caused the stock to free fall in after-hour trading. Likewise, word about this recall caused the stock price to drop nearly 8% in after-hour trading.
More as we get it.
