That’s No Accident

There are some folks who think they can pull one over on the insurance company to try to get free repairs. If a car’s in an accident, they will claim that damage that existed before the accident was caused by it, no matter how improbable it is. Sometimes insurance companies investigate; sometimes they don’t.

We get a call from a customer. He’s been in a rear-end collision and his car needs some repairs. Fair enough. One of the things that needs to be fixed is the rear parking sensors. Again, fair enough. However, the damage he’s talking about seems excessive given the details of the accident. The garage is asked to check.

They phone back and the garage owner is barely able to contain his amusement.

Garage Owner: “He’s lying about the rear parking sensors.”

Me: “How do you know this?”

Garage Owner: “Because there aren’t any. The car was fitted for them as an option, but this one never had them installed.”

It seems that when he bought the car, the customer had thought that it had rear parking sensors but that they didn’t work, and he decided to claim that they had been damaged in the accident to get them repaired for free.

The claim was swiftly referred to the fraud department.