Cracking Down On Phony Phone Insurance Claims

from the upgrade-your-phone-via-insurance... dept

Over in the UK, police are trying to crack down on a phony mobile phone insurance claims. Apparently, a significant number of people claim to have their mobile phones stolen, just so they can get insurance money to help them upgrade to a new phone. In fact, certain mobile phone sales people are actually encouraging customers to do this - knowing that they'll get a larger commission for selling a more expensive phone.
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2004 @ 2:38pm

    Sometimes Helpful

    Disclaimer: I didn't read the link, but I thought I would put a personal experience here.

    I didn't get cellphone insurance and sure enough, my color phone dropped and stopped working. I took it back to the salesman, who signed me up for insurance and told me to come back in a week with the "newly" broken phone.

    So did we rip off the phone insurance people. Legally, yeah. Am I a very happy customer to this salesguy and will use him forever if I can? Yep.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2004 @ 12:01am

    No Subject Given

    I used to work in mobile retail in the UK about 7 years ago (although *not* in sales myself, support staff in store) and this sort of stuff was going on then.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    thecaptain, 17 Mar 2004 @ 6:23am

    Re: Sometimes Helpful

    am I happy that insurance companies raise their rates to deal with bull like this? You bet I'm not.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2004 @ 11:33am

    Re: Sometimes Helpful


    I " lose " my cell phone every 6 months to a woman's shelter.

    I get a shiny new phone.
    A Charity gets some assistance.
    And the insurance company gets to pay me back for all the money they scam out of me for auto, life, home owners and every other damn thing they can think of.

    An industry like insurance that has no morality deserves no morality from me.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2004 @ 1:53pm

    Re: Sometimes Helpful

    So you've decided for me that I want to donate money to womens shelters because you force your insurance company to donate to them and they, in turn, just pass that cost on to me.
    Would it in any way upset you if I decided that I'd rather donate my money to other causes (like a new phone for me) and went to the womens shelter and stole some money from them? I assume it would not.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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