Pub Landlords Regularly Dropping Customer's Phones in Their Pints

Squabbling couples, prankster colleagues, children and stroppy bar staff are responsible for nearly 400,000 insurance claims a year in the UK for mobile phones being dropped in drinks.

Mobile phone insurance provider, Supercover Insurance surveyed customers who had made claims for lost or damaged mobile phones. "We wanted to understand how nearly half a million phones a year end up in drinks, so we asked a cross-section of our customers how their phones ended up being drowned," said Carmi Korine of Supercover.

"For men, the main cause is stretching across a table and their phone falls out of their shirt pocket into a drink, or a phone being knocked into a drink during a meeting. For women, the main cause is a child, toddler or baby playing with a phone that they drop into a cup or glass.

"Those are the single biggest causes at around 30% each (120,000 each), but there is a surprising amount of phone rage or phone envy when the owner of the phone is not responsible for it finding its way into a drink

"Arguments between couples result in around fifteen phones a day being dropped into drinks deliberately (5,500 a year) - suspicions of two-timing, an affair or an impending split being the key reasons. Working on holiday, or simply working too hard are other issues - we believe there's around 1,000 incidents of that nature.

"Office parties and drinking sessions with work colleagues often 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.

"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."

Posted to the site on 24th June 2009