WATCH THIS BEFORE you buy ANY DJI DRONE or DJI REFRESH Insurance - Air 3 - Mavic 3 - Mini 4 Pro!

[@Fishingforbasstv]

Literally set my DJI drone up yesterday and paid my refresh insurance lol Hope I don't have to use it, that does not sound like a good experience. I was feeling secure up until now lol Thanks for the info!

[@livingwithrob]

Again, if you can get your hands on it to send back, it's an ok plan. If not, it's a total waste of money in my view.

[@DownsizingMakesCents]

Hey rob, i have been flying my air 2 for three years traveling in our fifth wheel all over the us and canada, after hundreds of flights, i crashed it this week. I have wanted to get the air 3 for a while so I wasn’t took bummed, just go the air 3 and got the refresh but your video is making me think maybe that wasn’t a good idea. I dont want to be somewhere where i can get awesome footage but i dont fly because im worried i will loose my new $1000 plus drone. I look back when i first got my air 2, and there were several places i didnt fly because i was afraid to fly over the water, missed opportunity. Maybe DJI wont actually replace my drone if i loose it, but the idea is that it will give me the confidence to fly and take risks to get great shots. We have a similar channel to you, focused on selling everything to live and travel in an rv, and include drone shots in almost every video. I dont want to miss any opportunity to get footage i may never have a chance to get again.. I am about to open the box on my air 3 now, thanks for your video and sharing your care refresh experience. Hope to see. You camping some day. Larry

[@livingwithrob]

Hey Larry. They'll replace the drone. For sure. I simply wanted to point out how much it's going to cost if it cannot be recovered. Plus...point out one can buy a refurbished for nearly what the fly away cost would be. And I'd be willing to bet the "fly away" replacement is a refurbished model.

[@Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay]

Thanks for this. I didn't get care refresh with my recent M4P. I think a small amount of background worry is healthy and makes you check everything twice ! If I lose mine I won't mind too much having to pay for a refurb replacement that is only fractionally more than the flyaway cost.

[@livingwithrob]

@@Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay and you make my point exactly. Refurbished is fractional more...with less headache! Thanks for watching.

[@MikeCorrigan1520]

Great points… would drone insurance (w hull protection) make more sense?

[@livingwithrob]

I wonder. I'm going to look into it.

[@rjbishop12]

If you flew around a rock formation, you probably lost LOS and hence the signal was lost. If so, did you have RTH set up correctly? It would need to ascend to a safe height before returning home. If you did not set your RTH height correctly, it won't make it home safely. You say "it appeared to continue to fly backwards". How do you know, especially if the signal was completely lost (as shown on your screen). And finally, for the record- DJI promptly replaced a very broken Mini 3 Pro under my care policy- it was painless. I broke it doing an orbit shot and it flew sideways right into a tall pine tree that I had not planned for, and then dropped to the ground.

[@livingwithrob]

-LOS loss does not create signal loss. -RTH was set correctly. This was my 6th drone. I am proficient with settings. -Did you not see the flight log video of before it was lost? That's how I know what it did. -Your situation was not Fly Away. Of course they replaced it. You could return it to them to rebuild and then resell.

[@VisualDroneProductions-yk5kk]

Great information. I was considering getting their "insurance" after my Air 3 flow away. Gotta rethink that now. Thanks.

[@livingwithrob]

Thanks for watching!

[@NawlinstoVegas]

If your flying for a business you can write off drone purchases as business equipment? as well and mileage and so on.

[@livingwithrob]

It still expends cash

[@tomn8tr]

I had a 2 year Care Refresh policy on a Mini SE. The controller failed in flight causing a hard spin on the drone and no way to stop the spin. I switched the controller off and the drone made it home. I contacted DJI to get my controller fixed. They said it was not covered under my Refresh policy - nothing but the drone is covered, but they said I could send it to them and pay big fees for them just to look at it. I bought a used controller on eBay for $49 instead. If I had a Mini Pro 4 with the expensive RC2, that would have hurt far more. If I had understood that only the drone is covered, I would have skipped on Refresh.

[@livingwithrob]

This is true. I just bought the Mavic 3 and Fly More combo to replace the Air 2s. Paid close to the same as the replacement cost plus initial Refresh 2 year fee of the Mavic 3 for the entire new set up. I've decided financially it's smarter to go this route than pay the insurance costs.

[@TyoEmil]

Thank you so much, this info saved me from a spending a lot of money on care refresh

[@livingwithrob]

Happy to have helped

[@ThePNWRiderWA]

I had a similar experience at Hells canyon in Idaho. It just kept going and going. Still,connected too. Some sort of conductivity issue. It was cheaper to buy one used if eBay since they want the drone. I have a 3, 4 mini, air 3. I went with an Auto Evo 2 v 3. Video and images are very good. After a year no issues , it just took some tweaks o the EXP to smooth it out.

[@livingwithrob]

@ThePNWRiderWA I agree. Buy a refurbished on ebay. I replaced with a Mavic 3 fly more from FB marketplace.

[@chetankulkarni489]

Very informative! Thank you

[@livingwithrob]

Thanks for watching

[@pacificlinedesign19]

Thanks for the info.

[@livingwithrob]

@@pacificlinedesign19 hope it helps

[@marekdomanskimovies5392]

what about insurance from other companies?

[@livingwithrob]

It's a good option

[@colinharrison259]

Thankyou rob , for your advice . I’ve just purchased a magic mini 4pro and I was considering purchasing the refresh plan . I’m certainly not now . Thanks again . I’m Colin from Guernsey.

[@livingwithrob]

To me, it's a waste of time and money.

[@ghettorecording2925]

oldguyFPV; I've been done with DJI for along time. They have their nose way to far up the FAA's arse for me. You never really own their drones anyway, you can only fly them where DJI will let you fly them. You couldn't give me a DJI drone. Build all of my drones myself now, never have any DJI problems. Fly safe, fly free!

[@livingwithrob]

Amen

[@ronaldokelberry228]

I’m sorry for your loss. But ANY insurance that lapses is not going to pay your claim. At least it wasn’t a $70K car! I’ve crashed a long way from home several times. There are several ways DJI pinpoints the location. I’ve hiked miles to retrieve it and even used another drone once to snag it. But I understand the frustration of buying insurance and the cost is what a replacement is. Better luck.

[@livingwithrob]

We can agree. If the insurance lapses, no dice. I made this more to expose the cost to us if you can not retrieve the drone. It's my opinion that the marketing around flying "worry free" is less than honest.

[@soundlinks]

Unless u had it setup in sport mode the object sensors are disabled..

[@livingwithrob]

Yes, I know

[@tombodet7918]

How is your return east trip going ?

[@livingwithrob]

Hey Tom, I emailed you some details.

[@andre-7423]

I made the mistake of buying the "refresh" deal for Avata2 : and I fly very much near/in steep mountains and over sea, if the thing messes up somehow, I am next to be ripped off. Discovered that too late.

[@livingwithrob]

At least you know now. The more if us who do, the less people will get taken.

[@662Piru]

The care refresh doesn’t give a replacement; only discount on the next drone

[@livingwithrob]

Yes, true

[@thomza]

A lot of insurance coverage is like this. For instance, many coverages require you to send in your cell phone for the company to cover it. This is the way it is.

[@livingwithrob]

I do understand this logic and how it works. What I don't like is the marketing deception. They promote is as if you pay the small insurance fee and you can fly "worry free"; an important aspect of flying a drone. While this is true, they should be more clear on the costs to fly worry free. It's not as advertised. In my view, they want the unit back so they can rebuild it and resell it. With a drone, unlike a cell phone, they can review the log files and clearly see what happened to it and whether or not it's actually irretrievable. And even with a cell phone, they can turn it into a "brick" (as can DJI with the drone) rendering it totally useless and unsaleable should a person be practicing dishonesty in their "insurance claim". Per your point, though, this is the way it is and the purpose here is to point that out. Per other comments, many do not realize this is the case when the policy was purchased and are only now finding out the hard way (as I did...) that it's going to cost only a few bucks less than buying a rebuilt drone should their drone fly away. Thanks for your input and for watching.

[@Piratepoilet]

Oh shit. I just brought a new DJI mini 4 pro. I live in New Zealand and stuff isn't cheap here at the end of the world so drone plus 4 batteries $2000 NZ. I'm a bit worried about that. I don't like the thought of waving good bye to that. It's been good so far so fingers crossed 🤞🤞

[@livingwithrob]

Wishing the best for you

[@Broccoli_32]

It’s such a shame when customer service and software doesn’t live up to hardware

[@livingwithrob]

Agree

[@jdthedjyt]

My condolences on your drone losses, Rob. I'll count myself as lucky. I stepped on my 7-month old Air 3 and broke it. I sent it to DJI and had a replacement cross-shipped to me within 4-days for $99. On the first test flight for that replacement, the obstacle avoidance system got faked into thinking it could Active Track me through the foliage of a river birch tree in my front yard. When it realized it couldn't, it stopped moving and alerted me. But before I could get around the tree to back it out of its predicament manually, wind blew a tree branch into a prop and the drone went down, damaging the camera gimbal. I repeated the return process and now have a second replacement Air 3, again for $99 and in 4 days' time. I still have coverage for another year and 5 months, including for 2 flyaways, but my plan for the Air 3 has a $359 replacement fee for flyaways. Our loss cases are different, and Care Refresh has definitely been worth it in my case. I do worry about losing quadcopters on over-water flights, but if I'm really worried, I have a couple of vintage Yuneec Typhoon H hexacopters that will still fly with one motor or prop gone.

[@livingwithrob]

I'm happy it has worked out for you with them. That's great. 🙂

[@twrmoor]

I had an ok time with dji care refresh for my Avata 1, but I did recover the aircraft. I've had 2 replacements in my first year got 1 more year to go. Flyaway cover seems much more of a rip off.

[@livingwithrob]

It is. That's why I wanted to make this video.

[@sodradronare]

i crashed my drone in the lake and could not get it back but dji just said send flight logs so i did and they sent me a new one ,

[@livingwithrob]

We're you charged the Fly Away fee?

[@sodradronare]

@@livingwithrob no :)

[@nimbuskhannk627]

Ok...let's see: For the incident with the Air 2S and the eagle, they replaced your drone. The math about the insurance cost, the excess to be paid and how much a refurbished unit costs should have been done before buying the DJI Care policy, not after. In the second incident you admitted the DJI Care policy had expired. It does not matter how many days had elapsed since it reached it's end. In what regards to the malfunction, (...if it was a malfunction and not operator error, i.e, the A2S does not have side sensors, so if it was flying backwards along a converging course into an obstacle line, it would hit it...), any item we buy may malfunction and if it is out of the scope of the warranty period applicable for our particular market, we are SOL...and, complaining about marketing?...c'mmon...

[@livingwithrob]

It seems you may have missed the entire point of the video. Thanks for watching anyway.

[@cnrspiller3549]

The insurance industry has to be the most ripped off industry since the library. No wonder they're super cagey. Drones fall out of the sky and run away all the time, I'm surprised they're insurable at all. It's still a good deal imo.

[@livingwithrob]

Thanks. Point in the video is...by the time you've paid the premium and subsequent "replacement fees" on a fly away, you are farther ahead to simply buy a DJI "drone only" replacement. Appreciate you watching.

[@littleevil725]

I had a flyaway and then a crash with my mini pro 3 they replaced it both times only issue was figuring out return process.

[@livingwithrob]

Agree. That's not so much my issue. They replaced my first loss too...but not without a fight. My desire is to expose the real costs associated with the Fly Away coverage. I bet the majority assume it's a reasonable fee. I want the public to know that fee is almost as much as buying a replacement drone.

[@antoniodellemonache9008]

I recently smashed my Avata 2 on the ground, it was seriously damaged and I wasn't able to retrieve the camera. I have care refresh and witin 5 days my drone was replaced. The claim cost me £39 - shipping cost covered by DJI.

[@livingwithrob]

Yep. If you can return the drone, it's not bad. The issue is the "flyaway"

[@andre-7423]

As you say, you do not own the drone. It is "mine" - in the sense that it will fly only where and how slow DJI says it will (EU slow-ass rules) - and ttaract all kinds of crazy people (by emitting RemoteID) - yes, I do know it's due to crazy regulations, I am in control of where and how my car drives, but not the DJI thingy. At very least : they need to leak a way to jailbreak it for those who want.

[@livingwithrob]

Yep!

[@user-xenfluence]

I live in Florida. There is a pond, lake or river every 100 yards here. I'm going to be flying over water just about every time. My replacement price for the Air 3 is $369 USD for a refurbished model. That's a steep co-pay considering I spent about $1500 for my Air 3 with its accoutrements. Probably about half the cost of the Air 3. Yeah, it makes me a little salty but what are you going to do? I don't blame you for opting out. Your video made me take pause. I am all to familiar with these so-called "warranties" that have you go on a jungle challenge to tasks to get honored - IF they do. I just started my business and I've already shelled out $10k for equipment. Ill need more too. I'm licking my lips at those DJI gimbals. Thanks for the honest video!

[@livingwithrob]

Appreciate the insight. Jungle Challenge. Excellent metaphor!

[@EyeCanShootFL]

****k @DJI, customer service is and has always been bad.

[@livingwithrob]

Agree. They have a bit of a corner on the market. What upsets me about my situation is the drone did NOT do as advertised and the flight log proves it. But they won't even consider dealing with it. The drone was over 1 year old and just barely out of warranty. I don't like that model of customer service. Further, I think that Care Refresh product is a real rip off. If I do end up purchasing another of their products, I will never purchase that as an ad on again.

[@WarrenOsborne-n3x]

Con game.

[@livingwithrob]

Yes, totally.

[@funtimestuff]

Most people are to stupid to know this. But your credit card fixes and replaces all electronics 1 year past the manufacturer warranty

[@livingwithrob]

Thanks for the input

[@shellewood]

Incredible bummer Rob! Insurance is such a scam.

[@livingwithrob]

You got that right! Never again...if I ever buy another drone.

[@vdm5873]

such a good content. earned another subscriber

[@livingwithrob]

Thank you. Happy to have you on board. Appreciate it.