There are probably very few (extremely lucky) people in the world that have never damaged, lost or had their mobile phone stolen then wished that they’d just paid the extra £1.50 per month to have it insured at the time it was purchased – hindsight is such a wonderful thing.

There is also a small percentage of, arguably more sensible, people who take out their mobile insurance but never claim… that brings us to the rest, the sneaky ones who falsely claim in order to benefit from a new phone, or just one that hasn’t been thrown across the room in wild celebration of the local football team beating their lifelong rivals, then surprisingly doesn’t work!

Here are a few classic, frequent excuses that aren’t fooling anyone, especially mobile insurance providers:

An old favourite for many pseudo-fraudsters. It seems simple enough, if you claim to have lost your phone you could get another, newer model and cheekily sell on the old one, right? Wrong. If you reported your phone as lost immediately to your network provider, at which point they will cancel it to prevent it from being used by someone else, you can’t use it again because most phones are tracked.

If you feel comfortable committing a crime then, by all means, go ahead, much like the ‘I’ve Lost My Phone’ scenario, you can report stolen mobiles to the police. This will involve a lot of paperwork including an official statement alongside a crime reference number, which goes to your insurance provider. Remember, a false report of theft can lead to prosecution for wasting police time, not to mention fraud.

Of course, we’re expected to garner bumps and scrapes on our mobile phone during its short-lived life, it would be impossible not to drop it occasionally or get it slightly wet, and most insurance policies will cover accidental incidents like cracked/scratched screens or mild liquid damage. However, if you’re viewed as having been completely careless with your phone i.e. you dropped it in the pub toilet in your standard Friday night drunken stupor, you’ll undoubtedly get found out.

It’s very easy to purchase mobile insurance when you’re in-store with the sales advisor, they can sweet-talk you into adding it on with the option to cancel after a short period of time. Many people ring up and cancel this immediately (having only taken out the insurance to please the guy in-store and help boost his commission), and some of these people like to pretend that they never called up to cancel in the first place and were unaware. Unfortunately, this will not work either, sorry!

So for those of you who have genuine reasons for needing to claim on your mobile insurance, don’t read this and fear that you’ll be subject to rigorous, immigration-style interviews. But for those of you who think you can beat the system, think again.