'Drowned' phones account for 430,000 claims a year

Squabbling couples, prankster colleagues, children and stroppy bar staff are responsible for almost 430,000 insurance claims a year in the UK for mobile phones being dropped in drinks.

Mobile phone insurance provider www.gadget-cover.com, which is part of Supercover Insurance, estimates around 30,000 more claims for phone dunkings were made in 2011-12 financial year compared to 2009-10.

“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.