I just came across this which was in my Facebook newsfeed: UAV Extended Warranty Service Contract

This is not really insurance, but a service contract. If it were insurance, you would get a check to replace or repair your drone. Here, you pay an annual servive contract, and if your drone crashes, drowns, gets run over by your car, or chewed by a neighbors dog, you send it in to his repair center (I believe in Minnesota) and it is repaired and sent back to you free of charge. (I don't know about the shipping fees. I assume I would be responsible for those, but I didn't ask).

I wonder if anyone here knows of this company or it's owner, Matt Neary. I am very seriously considering this.

I had a brief conversation with him this morning and for my situation, it would work like this:

1. I go to his website and decide what coverage I want. There are a couple different optons for each type of craft they cover.
2. You send in pictures of your undamaged craft showing your serial numbers.
3. There is a 15 day waiting period after you make your payment, then you are covered for one year from the end of that waiting period.
4. If anything happens for any reason, you send in the recovered craft (all the major parts must be there and must be from the same craft) and it is repaired and returned to you at no additional cost.

Sounds pretty good.

If you have a fly away or dump it in the middle of the ocean and can not recover it, you are out of luck. He will not send you a new one because you say it is lost. It must be recovered.

In my particular case, the annual cost would be $239.00 for the best plan for a Phantom 3 Professional. I pay that, and if anything happens within that year, I can get it repaired or replaced (if need be) for no additional cost as long as I have the recovered parts to send him.

I think that's a good deal.

What I don't know, is anything about this person or company. Looks legit, and sounds fine, but will he still be there in a year? I don't know. Does he actually follow through? I have no idea. Obviously this is a new business, so there won't be much of a track record to look up and I understand that. I am pretty sure I will take the risk and sign up anyway, even if there is no information available, aside from his own website, but I would be interested to hear if anyone knows this person and can vouch for him and his work. If he has had a repair shop for a number of years and is now just expanding into this, things like that. I hope he does well, he is offering a great deal on a needed service.

So if anyone has already joined up, used the service, or knows anything about it, please share here.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to take advantage of something like this.

Thank you!

I'm hoping someone with some knowledge of this company will chime in.  

You know what they say about "sounds good". This could be a guy in his garage that has every intention of being honorable. It would take a lot of contracts and no accidents to make this profitable. No deductibles on Gold? $75 on other? Sounds REALLY good. Would take most of the angst out of flying other than losing the bird. And what about the fall from 200 feet? Not much left to repair there. I don't know how this service is even possible with these products. Not at all saying it isn't but it is surely amazing if this is legitimate. If you have a spare couple of c-notes I guess it is worth a try...

I looked at it too, after I had a flyaway.  At this point a no go for me.  My biggest concern is liability.  Get that first.  This is worthless if you cause property damage or hurt someone.

Expensive insurance for one year.  What does a DJI3 cost without the controller?  $800.00..... so $239.00 for insurance, thats 30% of the cost, plus shipping and waiting.  
Hope you can follow up if you buy and have to use the insurance.  Forgot to ask, will they repair your DJI be with new or used parts?

l think he comes onto this forum, l remember seeing someone answering questions about this coverage back when l had a P2.
Pretty sure it's legit.

Zdrone Posted at 2015-9-2 13:24
I looked at it too, after I had a flyaway.  At this point a no go for me.  My biggest concern is lia ...

This is not insurance. It's a completely different animal. This will just get your product fixed. If you had a flyaway and did not recover it, this would not help you at all in any way.

jimcloud74@yaho Posted at 2015-9-2 13:19
You know what they say about "sounds good". This could be a guy in his garage that has every intenti ...

A fall from 200 feet would be covered as long as you scrape up all the pieces and send it to him. It will be repaired or replaced. This is according to a phone conversation I had with him yesterday.

Joe Blow Posted at 2015-9-2 13:40
Expensive insurance for one year.  What does a DJI3 cost without the controller?  $800.00..... so $2 ...

Could be expensive if you never use it. The question is, what is your piece of mind worth? If you crash in the first year and get it repaired for free, you will be saying what a great deal it was. It's a gamble. I didn't ask if he used new or used parts. I would have to say that the assumed expectation is that you would get new parts and not someone else's problems. But I did not specifically ask that question.

I did some checking on www.neary-aerial.com and found the following public information: http://www.bizapedia.com/ky/NEARY-ENTERPRISES-LLC.html

Insurance is gambling.  The insurer is gambling that more people will NOT have an incident than those who do.  The end result, they make money.  Now, what happens when they have more incidents than non-incidents?  They loose money.  My big concern with purchasing insurance is:  Who is underwriting the policy?  If the policy is underwritten by a large insurance agency then there is less likely to be an issue if claims get in the red.  Bigger insurance agencies can handle it in most cases.  If they are not underwriting the policy with someone, and backing it themselves, then the risk is higher that, if they go in the red, they could go out of business.  

I am not saying that this insurer is good or bad, I am just pointing out what I am looking for before I give someone my money and piece of mind.

Joe Blow Posted at 2015-9-2 13:40
Expensive insurance for one year.  What does a DJI3 cost without the controller?  $800.00..... so $2 ...

The Phantom 3 body without the camera/gimbal is $680. The Phantom 3 Pro camera/gimbal is $549. Cheaper to purchase a new kit than to purchase replacement parts.

Whatever you want to call the repair replacement coverage, it works out to about 25% of the retail cost.

As far as using new verses used parts, most car insurance companies have the option to use used parts for repairs instead of aftermarket parts. Can't imagine this is any different.

If your looking for liability insurance, join the AMA. Membership is $58 a year and gives you $2.5 million dollars of coverage.

AMA looks good but I'm not sure the liability coverage is good outside the USA.

To break even, this guy has to have at least 5 users, paid up, who have no claims in any year, no crashes, no flying into trees, no cracked bodies from the body base to body top screws, no cracked bodies from motor screws, no motors burning out, no prop failures, no bird strikes, no ESC burn outs, no CSC errors,  just for a single claim to replace a crashed P3P.
He is either delusional or a scammer, IMHO.

If the first 5 claimants all crash in the 1st month, he is $4000 down.

No company in their right mind would insure the drone itself for a fee less than the value of the drone since the risk is 100 %
For liability its a different matter. My insurance covers 750.000 SDR wich is a bit low around 700.000 $ will probably try to raise that limit

if youre looking for liability insurance for operating your quad or other UAV, enroll in the AMA http://www.modelaircraft.org/

kairkyo161 Posted at 2015-9-3 14:09
if youre looking for liability insurance for operating your quad or other UAV, enroll in the AMA htt ...

Doesn't that only cover you at an AMA field?

Odd I am now offering drone insurance, Phantom 2 or 3 for 1000$ a month!!  Is that good for you.