ORIGINAL: AXE EZ

I bought an AXE EZ about a month ago. It flew great up until about 2 weeks ago. I had probably 10 runs on it before it started having problems. It only has enough power to lift up and fly for about the first 2 minutes, if that, of flight. Then it hovers an inch off the ground at full throttle for the next ten minutes until the battery dies. The people at Helimax thought it was the battery so they sent me a new one. I charged it and tried it out and it did the same thing as the old battery. I had the E-board all out of tune just from playing around with it but I adjusted all three of the controls on the E-board (Gyro, tail rotor, and throttle) back to normal the best I could. It stays straight, the tail doesn't wobble or "wag", it turns around at the same speed as when I got it, and I adjusted the throttle until both rotors were spinning at the same rate at the highest speed. It just doesn't wanna lift more than about an inch off the ground after the first minute or two. The older battery actually seems to work a bit better than the new one. Helimax recommended I send them the AXE so they can look at it but I don't wanna send the chopper to the factory and wait 19 years to get it back. If the E-board was fried it would work much worse than it does. The motors don't sound like they're spinning slow or anything. It sounds the same as before, it just doesn't have enough power. Small things like adjusting the flybar link and putting new blades on helped a bit, but after a minute or two, it still doesn't have much thrust. Any ideas?
This is my first r/c heli and it's a lot of fun to fly around so i'd like to get it back to normal asap.
Thanks!