Thanks to the zero depreciation plans offered by car insurance companies, taking claims on damages and repairing costs have become much easier and more manageable than ever before. However, a Tata Punch owner took the liberty of this facility a bit far, when he deliberately damages his car to cover his vehicle damages under insurance claims.

A YouTube video from the channel of Prateek Singh shows a Tata Punch owner damaging his car by driving it against a wall and a direction-showing stone. The video describes how the Tata Punch owner tried to take his car to the insurance company and claim the damages under the insurance for his erstwhile minor damages. However, to everyone’s surprise, the car owner says that the insurance company told them to damage the car further to cover the repair expenses under insurance.

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Citing this absurd claim, the Tata Punch owner first drove his white-coloured vehicle against a wall on the left-hand side, due to which the front bumper and headlamp housing on the left side of the Punch got badly damaged. However, the Punch owner didn’t stop there, and he further drove his vehicle against a stone on the same side, which damages the side body cladding and door panels on the left-hand side. While the cladding came off the vehicle, the door panels got severe dents over them.

Claims that insurance surveyor asked him do it

The owner of the Tata Punch uploaded videos of himself damaging his vehicle against the wall and stone on his social media account. He captioned the video, stating that the insurance company only told him to damage his car more to cover the expenses under the insurance claims. However, it is unclear whether the insurance company has considered the matter and covered the damage expenses under the insurance claim taken by the Punch owner. Usually, under the zero depreciation clause, an insurance company is liable to bear the entire damage expense, and the car owner only has to bear the survey charges conducted by the insurance company.

Carrying out such an extreme step just to cover the damage expenses can backfire on the vehicle owner, as insurance companies generally do not cover the damages caused deliberately by the car owner if it comes to their notice. Several car owners do not take any insurance claims, to get discounts during the insurance renewal, citing the clause of no claim bonus. However, a car owner himself rarely claims to make damages to his car and makes his act public to gain the attention of his car insurance company.

But there have been similar incidents in the past. Many owners deliberately damage the parts of the vehicles to get a claim and change the part to a newer one. In developed markets, insurance companies also keep on scanning the social media to look for such scammers.

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