How to Check the Status of Your DJI Care Refresh Insurance

Despite the level of sophistication of current drone technology, they are essentially still fragile machines that can be easily damaged by a crash. Your drone may not end up getting totaled with a minor mishap, but its less robust part (such as the propellers or the gimbal) might no longer function as they normally would.  For this reason, we always recommend getting a drone insurance policy.

Two of the best drone insurance policies available to DJI drone owners are DJI Care and DJI Care Refresh. These are excellent products that offer a wide coverage, but they still have their limitations. If you plan on making claims on your DJI Care or DJI Care Refresh plan, then it’s a good idea to verify the status of your plan first.

How do I check my coverage?

For DJI Care, you can check your remaining balance via the DJI website. You only need to input the serial number of the drone or gimbal insured under DJI Care.

However, DJI currently offers no quick way to check the status of your DJI Care Refresh plan. If you need to make inquiries about your DJI Care Refresh, your best bet is to contact DJI support via phone, email, or live chat.

DJI Care vs. DJI Care Refresh

Despite the fact that both drone insurance policies are being offered by DJI, they use very different coverage schemes. The older policy, DJI Care, is more traditional in its approach. After paying a set amount depending on your drone, you will receive a DJI Care policy with a limited coverage amount. More expensive drones will demand a higher premium, which consequently results in higher coverage.

When your drone gets damaged within the conditions prescribed by DJI Care, you can send your drone to the DJI facilities for repair or parts replacement. The cost of the repairs done by DJI will then be charged against your insurance coverage. This means that you can make multiple repair requests within the 1-year validity period of your DJI Care, as along there is still remaining balance in your coverage.

DJI Care Refresh takes a very different approach to providing insurance for your drone. Instead of offering a repair service, DJI will offer to replace you drone with a new or equivalent to new unit. You will have to pay a small amount for the replacement unit, but it is a small fraction of the cost of getting a brand-new drone. A single DJI Care Refresh plan is good up to 2 replacement units, with the second one costing a bit more.

The acceptable scenarios of DJI Care Refresh is also more extensive compared to DJI Care. In addition to providing coverage for damage due to accidents, pilot error, and signal loss, DJI Care Refresh also covers water damage.

Why would you need to check?

If you have DJI Care, checking your policy status periodically keeps you informed of the remaining balance of your policy coverage. This amount will dwindle over time after a few repairs, so you might have to start flying more carefully.

Doing regular status checks is not as crucial when you have DJI Care Refresh since it does not work with a set policy coverage amount. Instead, you only need to know when the policy expires as you have the option of extending it for another year with DJI Care Refresh Plus.

If you have DJI Care Refresh, you also need to keep marks on how many replacement units you have requested. However, this is not the type of information that you are likely to forget. Take note that under the update DJI Care Refresh policy, you now have 15 days from the receipt of the replacement unit to send it in for another replacement should the replacement unit be defective. As long as you can do this within 15 days, the second replacement unit will not be charged against your DJI Care Refresh plan.

A few tips

1. Check if the defect is covered by the standard warranty

All DJI drones come with a standard warranty that covers product failure due to manufacturing defects. As long as the circumstances fall within the coverage of the standard warranty, any repair or parts replacement done by DJI will not charged against your DJI Care plan. DJI also has the option to replace your drone with a refurbished unit even if the damage is covered by the standard warranty.

2. Get an external GPS accessory

Although there are several acceptable scenarios that DJI Care or DJI Care Refresh will cover, you will still need to retrieve the drone and send the unit to DJI physically for you to make a claim. To make sure that you can retrieve your drone no matter where it crashes, it is always a good idea to attach a small external GPS receiver to it. Popular options include the Trackimo or Marco Polo compact GPS receivers.

3. Check for alternatives in your country

Right now, the DJI Care and DJI Care Refresh plans are only available in the US, EU countries, Canada, Mainland China, Taiwan, the UK, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. Don’t fret if you are not included in this list, as you can always get an alternative drone insurance policy that offers wider international coverage such as Flock or UAV Systems International.

Final thoughts

Having a DJI Care of DJI Care Refresh policy gives you more peace of mind when flying your drone, but it’s not an excuse to completely rest on your laurels. Flying carefully and checking on the status of your policy are still solely your responsibility as a drone pilot.

Fortunately, DJI offers a very easy way for DJI Care policy holders to check on the remaining balance of their policy coverage. The same cannot be said for DJI Care Refresh, but it also does not work in the same way as traditional insurance plans. In any case, it is important to make sure that you can retrieve your drone should it crash so that you can send it in to DJI for diagnostics.