Damage Protection - don't get it

Be careful everyone - I think this is a total scam.
Hard to actually get a penny out of rental guardian and today, I learned the hard way they have been charging me a multiplier on long term rentals. Suddenly hit with $1000 bill where they multiply it every month. Of course it is there when I go to look at the details, but I did not see that. Even more annoying, is that I canceled the insurance in July and they are still dragging on. Hard to get rid of it once committed. Super upset.
If you do the math, and self insure, you are FAR BETTER OFF. Taking a small amount on each booking soon adds up - then you have the nominal amount they are covering, but don't have to fight with insurance company to get damages paid out.
rally unhappy - and I am usually happy with these guys, but this is robbery.

Hi Susie,

Thanks for your feedback, and I'm sorry for your frustration.

The Damage Protection product cannot insure long-term residential-type stays without paying an extra multiple based on the length of stay. We mention this in our FAQ about Damage Protection here:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/damage-protection-common-issues-questions#long

And we mention it on the billing page when you turn on DP.

Every 30 days requires a new policy, so if you have a 12 month booking, it's 12 times the normal cost. It is not reasonable for a long-term residential stay to cover damage for 15 or 20 bucks. The longer a guest stays, the more likely it is that they will accidentally damage something, so there is no carrier who would be willing to do that. Others carriers simply deny coverage entirely. RentalGuardian allows it, but requires the 30 day multiplier.

What happened with your billing is that many long-term stays were not actually being properly charges by OwnerRez. So everyone was getting 60 or 90 day bookings covered for the normal 15 or 20 bucks. We recently corrected this problem, so some historical bookings (ie. your bookings back before July) are now newly catching on the invoicing. OwnerRez already paid RentalGuardian for the policy, but we did not correctly bill you for the longer policy.

We are looking into adding insurance options that are more comprehensive and have fewer restrictions. However, they tend to be more expensive (in some cases, a lot more) than what we offer now.

PS. I have tweaked the title of this forum thread to remove the word scam. RG's products are not scams. We carefully vet the products we advertise and sell. However, they do have limits and restrictions.

I have a guest that is staying 31 days and just got stuck paying twice the normal premium for damage protection because their stay exceeded the standard 30 coverage by one day. This was not the case with the past insurance provider that OR provided. I have filed a couple of claims with Rental Guardian and they find ANY excuse not to pay or only make a partial payment. When I was using CSA Travel via HA/VRBO, I NEVER had issues with them paying including missing or stolen items which Rental Guardian will not pay. I agree that it's looking better to just self-insure or go back to security deposits. OR needs to re-evaluate it's partnership with Rental Guardian.

We also decided to self insure. In 3 months we paid over 1K in ins premiums to RG. We had 1 claim ~150 because a guest broke a bedside lamp. The lamp was part of a set so we asked to have the set replaced since we couldn't get a single replacement that matched. RG denied it and stated they would only pay for the single broken lamp. Since they supposedly specialize in STR, they have to know that any quality owner would want to have a matching set of lamps unless you have a design aesthetic with complementary, but not matching, items. Even here, if a replacement complementary item could not be found they should replace both items.