iPhone upgrade fever leads to insurance fraud

Insurance firm Supercover Insurance has said iPhone-related claims jumped by as much as 50 per cent whenever a new model was released.

The assessor told Sky News that it had noticed a clear trend for iPhone insurance claims to spike whenever a new Apple handset is released, and says four out of ten claims were clearly "suspicious".

"While most customers take out insurance because they value their iPhone, we started to notice increases in claims as new and upgraded iPhones were launched," Supercover director Carmi Korine told Sky.

"For short periods around new model or upgrade launches, claims to replace lost, stolen or damaged iPhones go through the roof."

And Korine was in no doubt as to the reasons behind the sudden increase in claims: "The issue appears to be that most iPhone owners can only go for so long realising that they're a generation behind the latest must-have spec before they resort to extreme measures."

And just how extreme are some of those measures exactly? According to Supercover, some iPhone owners have been so moved by the desire for an upgrade that they've rained up to six hammer blows on their existing model.

In one case, the assessor says a claimant reported their phone had been dropped repeatedly and then been driven over by a car.

Unfortunately, Supercover says, suspicious claims are fairly easy to spot, largely because phones including the iPhone are designed to withstand a reasonable amount of punishment.

"iPhones, like most mobile phones, are actually very difficult to damage," it said. "Very badly damaged iPhones draw attention because they turn up in a state that even being driven over by a car or dropped from a tall building will fail to achieve."

In total, Supercover says it rejects around a quarter of suspicious iPhone claims.