Woman Has Insurance Canceled After Company Flew Drone Over Her House

A woman who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on home renovations had her insurance canceled after the company flew a drone over her house and cited unsanitary conditions.

Joan Van Kuren from Modesto, California was furious after receiving a letter from CSAA dropping her insurance citing unacceptable hazards and liability exposure.

After Van Kuren called them, she was told by a CSAA representative that the company had flown a drone over her house.

“It almost feels like someone’s looking in your windows, you know, when they tell you that they flew a drone over your home and looked at it. It’s like, whoa,” she tells CBS Sacramento.

Van Kuren has been with CSAA for almost 40 years and in that time estimates she has paid $80,000 to them. She has spent the last three years renovating her entire property, including her driveway, kitchen, and bathroom.

CSAA took issue with some clutter on the left-hand side of her house which is the final part of her property to be renovated. There is an old planter and some tires there. The insurance firm did not give Van Kuren the opportunity to fix it.

CSAA denied to CBS Sacramento that it flies drones. However, it does use “several sources of information to assess the condition of properties, including aerial imagery captured by third-party, fixed-wing aircraft and satellites.”

“It’s not ‘their drone’,” says consumer advocate Amy Bach of the United Policy Holders. “It doesn’t really matter does it.”

Van Kuren also had her car insurance and business insurance with CSAA which she, unsurprisingly, has now canceled.

“The gentleman said to me, ‘Is there any conversation we could have to keep you?’” she says of her chat with a CSAA representative. “I said to him, ‘There is absolutely no freaking way’.”

Companies Are Spying on You From the Air
A report back in April revealed that home insurance companies are secretly taking photos of private residences with drones, surveillance balloons, and even manned planes to find reasons to drop customers.

Mega-insurers are reportedly dropping all but the safest properties in an effort to recover from big underwriting losses — and aerial photography is a cheap and easy way to justify it.