Weirdest or cheekiest claim

[Guest111]

Me and one of the other lads was talking the other day and this subject came up,When I was subbying one time we were working on this large council estate when we received a claim for a 46" plasma tv that had allegedly been broken by one of the lads,Now at the time the tv in question was worth nearly 2 grand and it was a case of one of the bosses going and sorting it.Well he went to Curry's or somewhere like it and got the guy a new tv,over the next couple of months we had loads of claims for broken plasma's,everyone got a new one.Anyhow one day I was in the office and another call came in about a tv,I don't recall whether I was just suspicious or what but I asked what we were doing with all the damaged one's,apparently we just replaced them and left the old one with the tenant.BINGO! It suddenly clicked what was happening,so I asked the boss if I could have the old tv from this particular house,it was brought back for me after some objections from the tenant who wanted to keep it.We never had another claim,it turned out the original claim had come from a guy who had got the tv out of a skip and decided to try it on with the contractors,he'd been given a new tv and had passed the old one on to a friend who was also having the contractors in,this was repeated many times until I asked for the old tv.I don't know what annoyed me most,the fact that I didn't even get a thank you,or the fact that the firm was so gullible.
What are your weirdest or cheekiest claims experiences?

 

[Paultrim123321]

One of our clients had a claim a number of years ago which went along the lines of...
I was riding the roller coaster when it came of the rails hit the wall and bounced back on the track where I got whiplash.

Now if you have ever seen the workings of a roller coaster, what she was saying was as much nonesense as a rubber nail.

Needless to say it never went to court...still funny tho what people will try

 

[Dizzy_Maskell]

It was you!
You bast£7td I was the next in line for that TV and had to pay for my own in the end

best I heard guy dropped a TV carrying it upstairs and it fell to the bottom, only thing is the stairs where not wide enough for that to have happened as how did it get past him to the bottom of the stairs ????

 

[Darkwood]

Back when i did domestic we were taught to always bring any damage we see prior to our work to the customers attention .. with this in mind i noticed a large chip in a chest of drawers so i brought this up with the tenant (Mr) to which he said yes its ok been like that years ....

As we finished off and was just about to go only the women was home and we bid our goodbyes but she said before we went could i follow her to look at some damage ... a bit confused i did and she showed be the same chip that had been discussed with her husband prior to work...

I explained that it was there before we started and we were not at fault ...well she went off on one shouting the odds saying she'll sue us etc etc to which i listened amusingly and guess who walked in? the husband... she starts screaming at him that we had damaged the chest and showed him ..... i calmly expressed that if he dosn't stop her accusations immediately they will receive a letter from our solicitors regarding false claims, discrediting our good company name etc ... well he tore right into her and left her shocked and tearful... i had no sympathy and on the way out i said its a damn shame that there are people out there you strife to help and get it thrown back in your face ... all he could do was apologise but i do wander who's side he would have been on had he not signed the damages list prior to work.

 

[telectrix]

some years ago i had a claim against me. fair enough, i drilled into a radiator pipe buried in the wall, so was prepared to pay for the plumber and a decorator to patch the wall ( artex) and slap a bit of emulsion on. customer claimed plumber ( £300 ), redecorate and artex to whole hallway ( £350 ), new carpet, hall, stairs, landing, lounge (£635 ). the carpet did get wet, but the reason they wanted a whole new carpet was that their cat had ripped it to shreds all around the doorways. my insurance paid out, but the excess was more than my day's wages at the time. strange thing was, this guy was a a self-employed trucker and parked his rig in front of the house. 2 weeks later, he needed 6 new tyres @ £350 apiece. coincidence???

 

[RogertheBodger]

Eerie Tel.

 

[Guest111]

Once had a bloke try to claim for a new carpet,apparently I'd burned a hole in it with a hot drill bit,funny thing was there was no burn in the dust sheet.Needless to say he didn't get paid out.

 

[Rockingit]

We had a woman try to claim one of the lads had busted up her sons laptop screen. It was obvious to a blind man that this kid was trying it on and the damage had been caused by him, but Mother was going to stick up for him regardless. Seem to remember I knocked a hundred quid off the bill to cover her insurance excess as a goodwill gesture just to make her shut up!!

 

[Des 56]

A dear old lady,who was good as gold and a lovely character phoned and left a message about damage after I had rewired her house

I called to see her
"The kitchen table was stained" she said
The table had been mioved about a foot and consequently the sunlight has stained the wood

I went along with her because she didn't exactly have all her marbles
I said I would get refresher Beeswax polish and make it like new
I turned up with some Mister Sheen and polished away for 5 minutes,I told her to give a once over every now and then for the next few days

About a week later,she phoned and congratulated me on the repair,saying the wood looks better now than ever

"Claims" ugh what of them ?

 

[UNG]

I think some people just try it on.

Once had payment from a builder delayed despite a few phone calls a cheque never materialised so it was passed to our solicitor for the nasty letter the builder then phoned us to say payment was being held because there was a claim against us from a garden centre attached to the property we were working on because an RCD had tripped and damaged their automatic watering system according to the engineer called to fix it needless to say the builder was given down the banks for accepting any liability without contacting us and I pointed out to him that no independent assessment was open to both parties as a couple of months had passed and therefore no case to answer as any evidence was lost and I looked forward to receiving their cheque before the solicitor proceed to the next level of collection, 36 hours later the cheque appeared