Nine lies your insurer will catch you telling

Some drivers try to push their luck by putting through a few `extras' on their car insurance claims. Here, we reveal nine of the most tempting lies you'll want to tell your insurer - and whether you'll get away with it!

Car insurance is one of those things all vehicle owners have to pay for, and yet it always feels like a bit of a rip-off. After all, if you never need to make a claim, it can feel like you’ve simply thrown hundreds of pounds down the drain.

On the flipside, if you do need to make a claim, you might want to try to get your money’s worth.

In fact, many of us try to pass off old damage and normal wear and tear to our car as part of genuine insurance claims in order to try and get our insurers to pay for these repairs.

So here are nine of the sneaky lies car owners try to get away with, according to Swiftcover and esure:

1. Two for one

Imagine you’ve had a small dent in one of your car doors for months and months but haven’t had the time or money to have it fixed.

Someone then drives into the side of your car so when you go to get the damage repaired, you decide to also claim that the door damage occurred during the accident – hoping that the insurance claim will cover these repairs.

However, insurance assessors and garages are good at spotting old damage and dents that were clearly not caused by the accident. As a result, they will refuse to carry out the repairs. And passing off old damage as new is fraud, and could lead to criminal proceedings.

2. Asking a favour

In this instance, instead of trying to hide the fact you’re asking the garage to fix your car door which wasn’t damaged in the accident, you simply ask the garage to repair it as a favour. And you then expect the garage to hide the cost when it invoices the insurer.

If the garage is reputable, however, it won’t agree to do this because if it gets caught, it will lose all of its lucrative insurance work. What’s more, the cost of carrying out fraudulent repairs is ultimately passed on to policyholders through higher premiums.

3. Wear and tear

Imagine your car has a few mechanical problems caused by general wear and tear. Or perhaps something more significant is wrong with your car – such as a seized engine because you forgot to keep the oil topped up, or you put petrol in a diesel car by mistake. You know this is going to cost a lot to get fixed, so you decide to try and claim for this on your insurance, claiming you don't know what caused the fault or it was an accident.

Although many drivers try to do this, car insurance doesn’t cover you for mechanical issues or problems caused by poor maintenance – even if the mistake you made was an ‘accident’.

4. Extra repairs

You’ve taken your car to the garage after an accident and the garage discovers some additional problems that are unconnected to the accident – such as damaged or worn-out parts. So you request that they be fixed or replaced as part of the insurance claim. You may not have even been aware of the problem, so will assume it was caused by the accident.

Insurance assessors and mechanics know which problems are the result of an accident and which are coincidental. You can’t get your insurer to pay for any kind of damage or wear and tear if it wasn’t a direct cause of the accident.

5. Stolen items

You leave your laptop on the seat of your car while you pop to the shops, but when you get back to the car, it’s gone. So you claim you locked up your laptop safely in the boot or glove box when you make your insurance claim to ensure you get your money.

However, insurance assessors will be able to tell if the facts of a crime don’t match up with your claim. So, for example, if there’s a broken rear window and you’re claiming you left the laptop locked up in the boot, your claim is likely to fall through. Similarly, if your car is broken into, don’t try to claim for items that weren’t in the car to begin with.

6. Free MOT and service

Some drivers automatically assume that when they make a claim on their car insurance, they’ll get a free service as part of the repairs. And some will even ask the garage to carry out their MOT.

However, work carried out under an insurance claim will only cover repairs needed to fix the damage caused by the accident. General maintenance and servicing won’t be included.

7. Phantom passengers

This one is a little more sinister, but it’s an increasingly common problem. A driver hits another car and after the accident, the driver’s insurance company receives personal injury claims for four people, when in fact the driver only remembers there being two people in the car he hit.

The third party has used this accident to lodge claims for ‘phantom’ passengers. These extra passengers are simply friends or accomplices who are willing to say they were in the car that was hit and were injured. They may claim they were sleeping in the back seat but in fact they weren’t even in the car.

This is a serious crime and anyone who gets caught doing it could be jailed.

8. Stolen car trick #1

Your son borrows your car while you’re on holiday. However, your car isn’t covered for your son to drive it, and after he takes his friends out for a spin and accidentally crashes the car, he gets his friends to agree to saying the car was stolen. In some cases, he may even convince you to also tell the insurer the car was stolen.

However, insurers know that modern cars can’t be stolen without the original keys which usually only the owners have access to. Forensic investigation and witness statements can easily reveal that you’re trying to cover up the real circumstances, and this can have serious consequences for wasting police time and lodging false claims.

9. Stolen car trick #2

You phone your insurer to say you car has been stolen and you’ve reported it to the police. However, your car is in fact hidden in a ‘lock-up’ awaiting either classified ad or auction website sale.

Insurers know how uncommon it is for a car to be ‘stolen unrecovered’. Due to the fact that modern cars can’t be stolen without the original keys, thieves tend to focus on high value models to make it worth their while. As a result, there is no market for ‘ordinary’ cars, so if one genuinely goes missing, it’s usually been used for joy-riding and will turn up abandoned and burnt out.

Insurers have a high success rate in uncovering ‘lock-up’ fraud and you can easily get caught out!

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