SUPERCOVER INSURANCE
PRESS RELEASE
March 2, 2010.
“Too good” customer service costs mobile phone companies dearly.
Over-enthusiastic customer service is costing the mobile phone industry dearly as allegedly lost and damaged handsets are replaced without enough questioning or investigation.
Carmi Korine, director of Supercover Insurance – one of the longest established mobile phone insurers – said that a growing community of less-than-honest customers are taking advantage of mobile phone companies and insurers torn between hanging onto subscribers and questioning dubious insurance claims.
Insurance claims made end-to-end by phone have become the norm as insurers compete on speed, efficiency and fast customer service.
“Typically, a claim will be made by phone, the customer will falsely state a phone has been lost, they’ll be sent a new replacement – but they’ll continue to use the old one and sell the new one, sometimes for hundreds of pounds,” said Carmi Korine.
“We and our clients and partners – a range of high street names and big brands – have been slowly but surely tightening-up procedures for mobile phone loss claims after this trend started to emerge.
“We’ve found that in introducing downloadable claims forms, which have to be filled in to back up an ‘in-principle-agreed’ claim over the phone, around half of the claims made by phone simply disappear.
“We also developed a simple process to track and time use of the ‘lost’ phone, and, working with the service providers, discovered that some claimants were even making their claims by ringing from their ‘lost’ phone, even though they had changed the SIM card, and hence the number. Mobile phone usage can be tracked through electronic serial numbers as well as the phone number.
“Fundamentally, as an example, a false claimant will lose or damage a phone, claim it is no longer in his or her possession, make a claim to the insurer – which, in this day and age can be under any brand name, not necessarily insurance – and try to drive the claim through over the phone.
“This type and level of service has been growing as insurers compete to offer the fastest claim turnaround service, but phone-call-only claims are wide open to abuse – with the emergence of serial false-claimants committing what, effectively, is fraud.”
Supercover is a 15-years-established provider of insurance for consumer portable high-intrinsic-value products such as mobile phones, laptops and other gadgets, as well as spectacles.
Ends
Further information:
Iain Macauley
0161 929 0446/07788 978800
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