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Ah I love my job in Claims.
You hear some brilliant stories.

Some of the best I've heard (these are all genuine, I guarantee).

I wish to make a claim against my neighbour's household insurance. During a storm his shed was picked up by the wind and damaged my house. It was definitely his fault - he did keep it in a terrible state of repair!

I swerved to avoid some cow muck, skidded and crashed through a fence.

My engine has stopped working. My ex-boyfriend cast a voodoo curse on it before he left. Is that covered?

I've lost my car. (This deserves an explanation I feel. A man phoned up to put a claim in for his LOST car. When questioned as to whether or not his car had been stolen he said that it hadn't been, he'd just lost it. A claim was put in for it but he called back a day later to declare that he had found his car again.)

I've had builders in and now there's a funny smell in my house. Can I claim?

I reversed into someone at traffic lights. It wasn't my fault, he wasn't looking at where I was coming.

A seven foot hare jumped onto my bonnet and ran off.

I was driving up an unknown Welsh road when I spotted a taxi doing strange manouvers in the road and hit it. I later found out that taxis aren't covered to drive down unknown Welsh roads but it was too late by then.

A dog did it's business up the PC.

I left the front door open and when I came home my TV was gone!

My passenger window's been smashed. They stole my iPhone and SatNav but I don't think it was thieves.

I was distracted by a discarded refrigerator on the side of the road which caused me to have the accident.

Can I make a personal injury claim? I've injured my little finger.

I lied and told my wife that I wasn't looking where I was going. Truth is I was distracted by a fit woman at the crossing.

I think he stopped in front of me deliberately. He looked very suspicious. Had a big beard and everything.




Anyways, that's mine.
And now for some from elsehwere.

Enjoy!

EckoZero wrote:I've had builders in and now there's a funny smell in my house. Can I claim?

Hey, hey - that one is perfectly reasonable! Nothing like having the workforce finish a job but leaving you with a sneaking suspicion that some pillock has put a nail right through a sewage pipe, and that you're going to be swimming in your own waste by the end of the week with no come back...

I reversed into someone at traffic lights. It wasn't my fault, he wasn't looking at where I was coming.

Love that one!

People will say literally anything to get out of accepting they were in the wrong.

If you drive into the back of someone, you are to blame. There are no mitigating circumstances, you were either travelling too fast or too close to the car in front.

But somehow it's ALWAYS the fault of the person in front.
And the oft used "How can he be claiming whiplash? I only hit him at 3mph"

Insurance is a strange mistress indeed

The local news here had a piece a couple of years ago about frivolous public liability claims. The one that stuck with me was the woman tried to claim from the Trafford Centre saying the marble floors were too hard and hurt her feet. Seriously!

Tomo wrote:The local news here had a piece a couple of years ago about frivolous public liability claims. The one that stuck with me was the woman tried to claim from the Trafford Centre saying the marble floors were too hard and hurt her feet. Seriously!

Now, where's that Oh Dear smiley when you need it...

What is this claim culture all about eh?
I fell off a bike once. Did myself some rather nasty injuries.
Got up, wheeled the bike home and tended to my wounds.
I didn't try and sue the council for leaving the road in a poor state of repair! If I fell off my bike, my fault.
If my feet hurt, I'd either wear softer shoes or lose some weight.

Tsh.

EckoZero wrote:People will say literally anything to get out of accepting they were in the wrong.

To be fair, insurance companies will do what they can to avoid paying out.

aporia wrote:

EckoZero wrote:People will say literally anything to get out of accepting they were in the wrong.

To be fair, insurance companies will do what they can to avoid paying out.

See, before I started working in claims I thought that too.

However...

A car driving around with a full body kit and alloy wheels which they didn't tell the insurance company has an accident.
The engineers report shows these modifications which weren't in the original risk.
Rather than not pay out on the claim, the insurer will normally recalculate the risk to take account for the modifications and charge the insured the difference.

Sometimes I wish they would refuse to pay out to be honest.
Makes a mockery of being honest when you take out the policy if you'll only ever get found out if you need to make a claim, and then all you have to do is pay the difference.

Good stuff, I used to work in claims for Parcel Force and heard some good ones.
My favourites were the people that tried to scam eBay by selling something for £1 plus £200/£300 postage fee (apparently this means you pay less to eBay? i don't really know); they would ring up and claim their xBox/guitar/painting/whatever had been lost in the post and wanted the value of the item back, say £300. as they had sold it on eBay for £1 they were fully entitled to a full refund of the sale amount of... £1! We would refund the sale value of the item, but not the P&P. Hilarious sometimes!

I was driving to Whitby with some friends many years ago. Driving along the main road into Whitby there was a man on a bicycle driving eratically ahead of me. He pulled out in front of a car in front which had to swerve to avoid him. I slowed down as I approached the bicycle rider but it was no good. The man on the bike turned right in front of me. He and his bike ended up on the bonnet of my car with his face pressed up against the windscreen. I'll never forget the look of sheer surprise on his face.

I'd swerved the car like crazy in a vain attempt to avoid him and ended up through a wall on the other side of the road. Miraculously no-one was injured, but my car was totalled and the bike was a bit bent. People living near-by ran out to help, an amulance arrived to take away the bike rider who, it turned out, had learning difficulties and wasn't particulalry bright. He insisted the accident was my fault. The police came and took statements etc. and I was allowed to continue my journey (thanks to the AA) to Whitby. My car was taken back to Sheffield on the back of a lorry.

I later received a letter from the police saying they weren't charging me with anything. I should bloody hope not I thought.

A year later I found out that the bike rider's parents had made a claim against the company's insurers (it was a company car) for injuries, damages to bike, emotional upset etc., and the insurance company had paid out without saying anything to the company or me!

AND... everyone at the company who had a company car had to go on a "driving evaluation" test set up by the insurance company.

I was outraged. And still am. And I now hate bicycle riders on the main road. They really stress me out.

EckoZero wrote:Now, where's that Oh Dear smiley when you need it...

What is this claim culture all about eh?
I fell off a bike once. Did myself some rather nasty injuries.
Got up, wheeled the bike home and tended to my wounds.
I didn't try and sue the council for leaving the road in a poor state of repair! If I fell off my bike, my fault.
If my feet hurt, I'd either wear softer shoes or lose some weight.

A few Christmases ago (about 1997, I think) I was rather drunk one night waiting for a taxi outside a chip shop. Not looking where I was going, I slipped sideways off the pavement and sprained my ankle. Chips went everywhere. Pretty much all my friends said I should sue the council But what exactly would I sue them for? Not looking where I was going on a perfectly good pavement?

A mate of mine was a passenger in a car that turned into the path of an oncoming vehicle once. It shook him up but nothing more. He put in a claim, got a couple of grand, and didn't see anything wrong with it even when everyone took the mickey out of him.

And don't get me started on those odious Injury Lawyers 4U adverts trying to make out there's some sort of undo button on life.

The Compensation Culture...someone else's fault...someone else will pay....

Screws it for those who genuinely deserve any compensation and we all end up paying anyway in terms of increased prices and premiums.

There was a claim I heard about that was so damn classy I didn't care that it was a rip off.

Apparantly a lwyer brought a box of fine cuban cigars, and got them insured for all sorts of things including fire damage.

He then smoked them and claimed them on his insurance, saying he lost them in several small fires.

Obviously he didn't win.

Jean Eugene Roberts wrote:There was a claim I heard about that was so damn classy I didn't care that it was a rip off.

Apparantly a lwyer brought a box of fine cuban cigars, and got them insured for all sorts of things including fire damage.

He then smoked them and claimed them on his insurance, saying he lost them in several small fires.

Obviously he didn't win.

But was convicted of arson.......

Ha! I hope so, that'll teach him to argue semantics.