DJI Care Refresh vs Insurance Policy

[Cymruflyer]

No, they will replace it with a new/refurb unit. But, the replacement cost is higher without the old one.

Ahh, so then it is still not the only way to go because State Farm charge between $60-$70 to payout for buying a new one, DJI costs more to insure and charge you more if you can't produce the broke/lost one. So I stand by my original comment, it is not the only/best way to go, with DJI.

 

[66427cobra]

Care refresh participants are probably the payment method DJI used to pay for their new multimillion dollar building.
I chose to just be very cautious with how I fly my toys.

Still not a horrible idea for newbs. It worked out well for me. My Mini 2 hit a tree and crashed to the ground while testing a mission on one of the automated control apps. Tried to abort but wasn't quick enough.

It's like any other type of insurance. If you never use it, you gave them money and maybe all you got was peace of mind.

 

[a2tomm]

I have used State Farm for 3 years on all three of my drones,I Had an Autel eveo 2 taken out by a couple of farmers ,State Farm came thru in less than 8 hours .Today I ave three drones and two vehicles insured by them .Never needed the care fresh thing so can't speak for them

 

[FlySkyJumper]

Apologies if this topic is in the wrong category I wasn’t sure where it belonged, As per the title really, are there any Pros & Cons to Individual Insurance vs DJI Care Refresh, I’ve had the DJI care twice before and never needed to use it thankfully, does Individual Insurance cough up as easy as DJI would if you drone didn’t return to you or decided to go for a swim, a positive I see is you can get public liability in with the insurance for less than DJI cover, but if insurance companies turn into insurance companies and try to use any means possible to wriggle out of paying as soon as the word “Claim” is mentioned, then it isn’t so appealing, Also what does “We ask that you fully comply with local/national aviation regulations” in relation to coughing up money if your drone goes skinny dipping and is lost, is it just to do with FRZ’s and areas of water within these zones, thanks for any help folks.

So there are several options out there. I've been "droning" for nearly a decade. If you can afford it you should consider getting both the DJI Refresh Care + for as long as it is offered. In the unforseen event of an accident resulting in damage, you will get a hassle free service from DJI for a very small price out of pocket. (depends on your drone what they will charge for deductible) I have had to use this service twice and it was worth every penny.

Then I pay 60 bucks a year for liability insurance. DJI does not offer this. Say your drone damages someones property or causes damage to a person. You will want this...I fortunately have never had to use but know people who have had to use it. One of the two friends was dropped with the insurance after their claim, but the insurance covered his butt big time saving him over 40 grand.

 

[vindibona1]

It's not the way, because if you can't supply them with your crashed drone, they won't replace it with a new one. If you lost it in trees or it went into the water, you are out of luck, from what I understand. With State Farm, for example, if it's lost you put in a claim and they pay out.

No, they will replace it with a new/refurb unit. But, the replacement cost is higher without the old one.

I'm a little confused as C/R and State Farm seem to be squished together in the conversation. To clarify:
DJI will replace a busted (or lost) drone with a refurbished replacement. I just had this with my Mini 2. It's like new and you can't tell.

If making a claim with State Farm, I'm sure they would verify the value of the replacement and issue a check for that amount. I've got my Mavic 2 listed at $1500. Would they cut me a check for that amount if damaged or lost? But again, with State Farm you can insure your whole kit, including controller, case, accessories if you can provide invoices up front. This is good protection in case of theft of you run over the case with your car. DJI C/R doesn't even cover the controller. If your controller goes wonky they'll cover it under warranty if it isn't damaged. If you drop the controller, even within the warranty period you're on your own. I know. I asked DJI and was surprised the controller isn't covered except for manufacturing defects under the warranty period.

 

[AlanL]

I lost a M3 in the Columbia River Gorge that was insured with State Farm. They cut me a check for the original invoice price which was a Fly More kit even though I only lost the drone and its SD card. I used the check to buy a bare M3 with one battery and controller and used the rest to upgrade my controller to a RC Pro. I told them at the time I just needed to replace the drone but they said coverage was for the invoice price. They do cancel the policy for the old drone since the policy is tied to the drone serial number but have since insured the replacement M3 with the new serial number and invoice.

 

[vindibona1]

I have used State Farm for 3 years on all three of my drones,I Had an Autel eveo 2 taken out by a couple of farmers ,State Farm came thru in less than 8 hours .Today I ave three drones and two vehicles insured by them .Never needed the care fresh thing so can't speak for them

The drone insurance with State Farm is really the only non DJI deal in town unless you want to buy expensive commercial "hull insurance".

As for car or home, I recommend ditching State Farm before you might need to make a significant claim. My family and I, independently have had nothing but claims headaches from them the last few years.

I had them continously for over 40 years and my first negative was when I made a claim that was denied. We had a rain and there were residual raindrops on the windshield. The sun came out and caused the raindrop to behave as tiny magnifying glasses and blistered the entire top of my dashboard. The dashbboard was quoted at $2000 to fix. SF claimed the dashboard was defective, which was BS. That was my last dealing with them with my car and moved on to much better coverage at half the premium.

My sister was backing out of her driveway with 6 feet of snow so couldn't see and someone driving down the street and wasn't paying attention hit her. SF while they paid, they claimed she was at fault and with one accident canceled her.

My youngest daughter had roof damage on her condo and after a single claim SF canceled her.
About a year ago my oldest daugher had hail damage to her roof which resulted in significant water damage inside. I mean significant. Walls, flooring on two floors need partial to total replacement. The adjuster tried to wiggle out of the claim, but the contractor ended up proving that the adjuster was wrong and SF finally admitted that they were liable. But they've been fighting about replacing skylights when the roof needs replacing. There were lots of other issues that SF tried to wrangle out of paying. It has been a nightmare. The front inside of her house has been torn up for A YEAR and she has had to retain a lawyer and will probably end up suing SF.

As I said... I'd been with SF for over 40 years for my car and still have them for condo insurance. I feel like I'm taking a chance with SF and am contemplating moving to another company with that too. Too many bad recent experiences.

 

[Milo187]

The State Farm agent I found in Savannah carried a "Personal Articles" policy a couple years ago that I used. $85 for the year. Covered EVERYTHING. Lost, stolen, crashed, run over, water damage, you name it. You just have to give them your remaining gear, like your controller and whatever else was included in the package you're insuring. Check cut next day, literally for the cost you paid. You can go directly to Best Buy and replace it or whatever.

Now, here's the rub... They will more than likely cancel your policy after the claim unless you carry other insurance with them or have insured multiple years with no problems. so.. there you go.

I'm in Savannah, GA, btw and this was in 2019 with a Mavic Pro. I never made a claim and they have repeatedly called me over the last several years to come back.

The RUB indeed! The dirty little secret with insurance is you never come away clean. Recently I moved to another state and had to obtain new home and auto insurance. My wife and I have clean driving records but when we got quotes the agent said you have claims within the last 5 years. What? The claim turned out to be windshield chip repairs! We had two of them in the last 5 years and guess what ... our rates went up because of these silly little claims. BS. The take away here is if you have drone insurance and make a claim they may payout but you will pay them back in higher premiums over time or worse yet if you have a serious claim and several minor claims the can drop you all together.
My advise ... pay for small car damage out of pocket and get DJI Refresh. You can thank me later.
P.S. Even if you have an adjuster come out to estimate a claim and you choose not to take a payout from them the insurance company still considers this a claim. You guessed it ... your rate just went up.

 

[vindibona1]

The RUB indeed! The dirty little secret with insurance is you never come away clean. Recently I moved to another state and had to obtain new home and auto insurance. My wife and I have clean driving records but when we got quotes the agent said you have claims within the last 5 years. What? The claim turned out to be windshield chip repairs! We had two of them in the last 5 years and guess what ... our rates went up because of these silly little claims. BS. The take away here is if you have drone insurance and make a claim they may payout but you will pay them back in higher premiums over time or worse yet if you have a serious claim and several minor claims the can drop you all together.
My advise ... pay for small car damage out of pocket and get DJI Refresh. You can thank me later.
P.S. Even if you have an adjuster come out to estimate a claim and you choose not to take a payout from them the insurance company still considers this a claim. You guessed it ... your rate just went up.

A lot depends on the insurance company and sometimes the terms of the insurance. Some companies offer a premium policy that gurarantees that your rates won't go up or offer "claim forgiveness".

As for who I insure my car with after ditching State Farm? The Hartford (through AARP) At the time, around 2017, I think, I was paying SF $1400/year for a 10 year old Infiniti FX35. When I switched to the Hartford, with MUCH better coverage my premium dropped to $638/year (no joke). I traded in my Infiniti which had nearly 100k miles and bought a Volvo S60 Inscription. The additional premium with the new car was $100. Shortly after I had the Hartford insurance my car suffered hail damage to the tune of $2000. Hartford paid the claim with zero hassle. Fast forward to last year. Now the premium being $900, I was in the hospital for a month and during that time a caustic liquid dripped on the roof of my car. $800 to fix. Again, Hartfort came through.

I found The Hartford years ago when I insured my professional photography equipment through them (total value about $38k). A Hasselblad camera with a 40mm lens on it fell off a tripod where the quick release wasn't secured properly, causing $2000 in damage. Hartford paid the claim right away, without question. Do I sound like a fanboy of this insurance company? It sure is a different experience than the latter day experiences my family and I had with State Farm.

 

[Komatsu]

Thanks for all the information folks, decided to use DJI refresh for the new drone and got insurance for m2p with built in public liability £119 all in, really £90 because cheapest public liability insurance is about £30 elsewhere

 

[shawgod]

The drone insurance with State Farm is really the only non DJI deal in town unless you want to buy expensive commercial "hull insurance".

As for car or home, I recommend ditching State Farm before you might need to make a significant claim. My family and I, independently have had nothing but claims headaches from them the last few years.

I had them continously for over 40 years and my first negative was when I made a claim that was denied. We had a rain and there were residual raindrops on the windshield. The sun came out and caused the raindrop to behave as tiny magnifying glasses and blistered the entire top of my dashboard. The dashbboard was quoted at $2000 to fix. SF claimed the dashboard was defective, which was BS. That was my last dealing with them with my car and moved on to much better coverage at half the premium.

My sister was backing out of her driveway with 6 feet of snow so couldn't see and someone driving down the street and wasn't paying attention hit her. SF while they paid, they claimed she was at fault and with one accident canceled her.

My youngest daughter had roof damage on her condo and after a single claim SF canceled her.
About a year ago my oldest daugher had hail damage to her roof which resulted in significant water damage inside. I mean significant. Walls, flooring on two floors need partial to total replacement. The adjuster tried to wiggle out of the claim, but the contractor ended up proving that the adjuster was wrong and SF finally admitted that they were liable. But they've been fighting about replacing skylights when the roof needs replacing. There were lots of other issues that SF tried to wrangle out of paying. It has been a nightmare. The front inside of her house has been torn up for A YEAR and she has had to retain a lawyer and will probably end up suing SF.

As I said... I'd been with SF for over 40 years for my car and still have them for condo insurance. I feel like I'm taking a chance with SF and am contemplating moving to another company with that too. Too many bad recent experiences.

So do you insure your drones through The Hartford as well as your camera equipment?

 

[baddog]

Apologies if this topic is in the wrong category I wasn’t sure where it belonged, As per the title really, are there any Pros & Cons to Individual Insurance vs DJI Care Refresh, I’ve had the DJI care twice before and never needed to use it thankfully, does Individual Insurance cough up as easy as DJI would if you drone didn’t return to you or decided to go for a swim, a positive I see is you can get public liability in with the insurance for less than DJI cover, but if insurance companies turn into insurance companies and try to use any means possible to wriggle out of paying as soon as the word “Claim” is mentioned, then it isn’t so appealing, Also what does “We ask that you fully comply with local/national aviation regulations” in relation to coughing up money if your drone goes skinny dipping and is lost, is it just to do with FRZ’s and areas of water within these zones, thanks for any help folks.

When I first started my drone business, jobs were slow to come in, maybe 2 per month. It was better to have the care refresh and use the Verifly app for liability when needed. But now I am flying 2-4 times a week. Bigger mapping missions and Verifly would be more expensive than a full package Ins. policy. (hull coverage, plus $2 mil liability, 10% deductible on claims)
I have had 2 claims in 5 years and it never took longer than a week to get my claim settled. On the last occasion (Crash) I clipped a tree and the drone, (P4 V2), went down a pretty steep ravine about 300FT. It hit several trees on the way down and I know it was toast. Not worth the risk in the icy winter to try and retrieve it. I did go back and get the drone in the fall of the following year. It was in a few pieces and the battery was, of course, bloated but not in the drone, it must have fallen out the SD could not be read.

No questions were asked by the Ins. Company. They just paid out.
I did offer to send them the pieces I got the following year but they said it was not necessary.

The ins. company I have is the one that is offered thru the AMA website. This is not the Ins. policy that is offered for free to non-commercial, recreational pilots. This Ins. offer is for commercial pilots

 

[umanbean]

When I first started my drone business, jobs were slow to come in, maybe 2 per month. It was better to have the care refresh and use the Verifly app for liability when needed. But now I am flying 2-4 times a week. Bigger mapping missions and Verifly would be more expensive than a full package Ins. policy. (hull coverage, plus $2 mil liability, 10% deductible on claims)
I have had 2 claims in 5 years and it never took longer than a week to get my claim settled. On the last occasion (Crash) I clipped a tree and the drone, (P4 V2), went down a pretty steep ravine about 300FT. It hit several trees on the way down and I know it was toast. Not worth the risk in the icy winter to try and retrieve it. I did go back and get the drone in the fall of the following year. It was in a few pieces and the battery was, of course, bloated but not in the drone, it must have fallen out the SD could not be read.

No questions were asked by the Ins. Company. They just paid out.
I did offer to send them the pieces I got the following year but they said it was not necessary.

The ins. company I have is the one that is offered thru the AMA website. This is not the Ins. policy that is offered for free to non-commercial, recreational pilots. This Ins. offer is for commercial pilots

Very informative post, thank you.

 

[KD2SSP]

The customer support I got from DJI for a repair was impressive. I would have been happy with a repair but they sent me a new sealed unit within days. I then bought care refresh for peace of mind, but after it expires I might look into state farm.

 

[shawgod]

When I first started my drone business, jobs were slow to come in, maybe 2 per month. It was better to have the care refresh and use the Verifly app for liability when needed. But now I am flying 2-4 times a week. Bigger mapping missions and Verifly would be more expensive than a full package Ins. policy. (hull coverage, plus $2 mil liability, 10% deductible on claims)
I have had 2 claims in 5 years and it never took longer than a week to get my claim settled. On the last occasion (Crash) I clipped a tree and the drone, (P4 V2), went down a pretty steep ravine about 300FT. It hit several trees on the way down and I know it was toast. Not worth the risk in the icy winter to try and retrieve it. I did go back and get the drone in the fall of the following year. It was in a few pieces and the battery was, of course, bloated but not in the drone, it must have fallen out the SD could not be read.

No questions were asked by the Ins. Company. They just paid out.
I did offer to send them the pieces I got the following year but they said it was not necessary.

The ins. company I have is the one that is offered thru the AMA website. This is not the Ins. policy that is offered for free to non-commercial, recreational pilots. This Ins. offer is for commercial pilots

So AMA covers Drones? And you can join AMA as a drone pilot? It appears to be for things like Model airplanes and stuff. And if you join you get insurance on your drones when you fly recreationally?

 

[baddog]

So AMA covers Drones? And you can join AMA as a drone pilot? It appears to be for things like Model airplanes and stuff. And if you join you get insurance on your drones when you fly recreationally?

They also have an insurance company that supports commercial drones as well. You just have to dig for it.

 

[seejake]

I am having a lot of problems finding an insurance program that matches the care refresh from DJI. I have looked over all the place and there is a few companies and they want to charge you a pretty penny and as noted already have a deductible. I have a couple older drones that I couldn't get the care refresh on and I wanted to get some insurance on them. Unfortunately I can't afford the insurance on them. So now I am hoping nothing happens to them. Last year I crashed my Phantom 4 Pro and it cost me a couple hundred dollars to fix. I guess it is better then nothing.

I totally agree. With the care dji refresh you get your quick. I litterally had my drone 7 days later. So it on all my new drones. But inhave a fee older drones that insurance would cost an arm and a leg to cover so i rarely fly them. Another option although the drone has to be new, is a replacement program the the store you bought it at. I know best buy. Aderoma, b&h, drone nerds, and many more offer thier own version of dji care refresh, so that might be an option but typically those need to be purchased when you buy the drone or within a couple weeks. There are also many online drone replacement companies out there that do cell phone replacements that are venturing into drones as well. Those typically require a new drone purchase reciept as well.

 

[seejake]

Apologies if this topic is in the wrong category I wasn’t sure where it belonged, As per the title really, are there any Pros & Cons to Individual Insurance vs DJI Care Refresh, I’ve had the DJI care twice before and never needed to use it thankfully, does Individual Insurance cough up as easy as DJI would if you drone didn’t return to you or decided to go for a swim, a positive I see is you can get public liability in with the insurance for less than DJI cover, but if insurance companies turn into insurance companies and try to use any means possible to wriggle out of paying as soon as the word “Claim” is mentioned, then it isn’t so appealing, Also what does “We ask that you fully comply with local/national aviation regulations” in relation to coughing up money if your drone goes skinny dipping and is lost, is it just to do with FRZ’s and areas of water within these zones, thanks for any help folks.

That is a great question I know there is alot of people with those same thoughts. Drones are expensive and are not getting any cheaper, for example the new autel drone will be $8,999.00 dollars wtf??? I would recomend care refresh, ir autels version, whatever drone company's version. There are also other option although the drone has to be new, is a replacement program through the store you bought it at. I know best buy. Aderoma, b&h, drone nerds, and many more offer thier own version of dji care refresh, so that might be an option but typically those need to be purchased when you buy the drone or within a couple weeks. There are also many online drone replacement companies out there that do cell phone replacements like Assurion that are venturing into drones as well. Those also typically require a new drone purchase reciept as well. And be careful with those because many of those are here today gone tomorrow companies. But assurion is a company that's been around a while that works with Verizon and many other big companies so I would feel comfortable with them. Just do you research first on those

 

[GavinW]

DJI care is so much easier! They've replaced drones for me multiple times with no hassle while an insurance claim would add to my record; what to speak of multiple

 

[baddog]

DJI care is so much easier! They've replaced drones for me multiple times with no hassle while an insurance claim would add to my record; what to speak of multiple

It really depends on how much you fly commercially and what does you ins. policy cover?

I fly 2 to 4 times a week on commercial jobs and it just makes more sense to have an annual policy, then paying a small amount to sky watch or Verifly everytime I fly. (FYI: Verifly is no longer an option) So that small fee can be $30 to $50 a month. There is no drone coverage on those kind of policies.

My annual policy is $870 per year. This is just for my drone business, not an add on to a home policy. In my opinion that is a huge mistake. If they cancel your home owners policy because of too many drone n e claims, you're screwed.

I have 1.5 million in liability, $50k in medical and 10% deductible on my drones hull coverage. 1 mavic pro, 1 Mavic Pro 2 and 2 P4P V2 drones.

I have had 2 claims over the past 3 years. Both paid out within a week, no bump in annual fee.

And I get a new drone, nothing refurbished. Plus I do not have to provide my drone, if it lands in water and is unretrievable.