GADGET-COVER.COM
MOBILE PHONE & GADGET INSURANCE
PRESS RELEASE
April 23, 2012.
PHONE DROWNINGS UP AS SQUABBLING COUPLES,
WORKAHOLICS AND STROPPY PUB LANDLORDS DROWN 430,000 MOBILE
Squabbling couples, prankster
colleagues, children and stroppy bar staff are responsible for nearly 430,000
insurance claims a year in the UK
for mobile phones being dropped in drinks.
www.gadget-cover.com the UK’s longest-established mobile phone
insurance provider, estimates around 30,000 more claims for phone dunkings were
made in 2011-12 financial year compared to 2009-2010.
Gadget-Cover asked a cross-section
of customers how their phones ended up being drowned, and there’s been a slight
change in reasons for water-, wine- and beer-logging.
“For men, the main cause remains
stretching across a desk or table and their phone falling out of their shirt
pocket into a drink, or a phone being knocked into a drink during a meeting –
people wave their arms around in meetings, often with a phone in their hand,
and some contrive to lose grip on their phones and get a bull’s-eye on a cup of
tea or coffee they could never manage if they tried,” said Carmi Korine of www.gadget-cover.com.
“For women, the main cause is a
child, toddler or baby playing with a phone that they drop into a cup or glass,
but with an emerging trend for children to wash phones they’ve gooped, or to
put them in washing machines.
“Those are the two single biggest
causes at around 40% each (170,000 each, 340,000 total) – primarily because
more people have more phones, and have them in their hands more of the time;
but there is a fall-off in phone rage or phone envy when the owner of the phone
is not directly responsible for it finding its way into a drink – down from
around 45,000 to around 36,500.
“Arguments between couples have
resulted in a doubling in the number of phones being dropped into drinks
deliberately – up to 11,000 a year compared to 5,500 a year in 2009. Working on
holiday, or simply working too hard are other issues – that’s also doubled to
around 2,000 incidents of that nature.
“Office parties and drinking
sessions with work colleagues can result in an ever-ringing phone being dropped
in a pint, and we do get quite a few claims when a client or customer has
dropped a supplier or adviser’s phone in a drink because they keep answering it
during meetings – if we gross up our claims levels pro-rata nationally, then
this would equate to around 2,000 claims.
“People ‘posing’ or showing off
their phones, or talking embarrassingly loud in bars or restaurants resulted in
around a thousand incidences of snatch-and-dunk.
“But at least once a day a stroppy
pub landlord will take a phone off a customer and drop it in a drink – usually
in the north, and usually because the pub has a phone ban.”
The remainder of claims arise from
phones being left on table tops and being drowned in spreading pools of spilt
drinks, phones left in bags with leaky drinks containers, or unexplained
incidents in which phones are swamped.
www.gadget-cover.com
is part of Supercover Insurance, the UK
Ends
Further information:
Iain Macauley
07788 978800
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