Contents & gadget claims: what summer taught us, and what it means for Christmas

24th August 2026

Summer always brings a familiar shift in contents claims – phones go into swimming pools, AirPods disappear on holiday, and televisions take a knock while children are at home for six weeks. The volumes this year are much as expected, but what has changed from previous years is how quickly these claims can now be resolved. So, when speed is available, how do you make sure the fast answer is also the right one?

We spoke to our Operations Manager for Validations and Repair, Samantha Adams about what this season has looked like and what it points to for the September iPhone launch and the run-up to Christmas.What have you been seeing in gadget and contents claims this summer?

What have you been seeing in gadget and contents claims this summer?

On our gadget schemes we’ve had an increase in things like mobile phones being dropped in pools on holiday, and AirPods being lost, left on the plane, things like that. A lot of it is people losing things while they’re in transit, travelling from one country to another, or travelling by train because they’re visiting people or going home for the summer. Students who have come home from university are part of that too.

Then on our home products there have been a lot of TV claims, and that’s just children being at home, playing with things in the living room, throwing a ball, throwing toys, accidentally smacking the TV – there have been a lot of those.

The other thing I’d say is that customers have been under more pressure this summer. We’ve had a heatwave, it’s the school holidays, they’ve probably got the kids screaming at home, and money is tight on top of all of that. It shows in how people come to the claim, and what I say to the team is that it isn’t about them, because you’re catching people at a difficult moment.

How quickly can these claims be settled now?

For a lot of them, on the first call. We’ve been using Let’s Chat, the video system in Synergy Cloud, and we’ve been processing day one settlements on TV claims. I’ve seen six day one settlements this month where we’ve literally just done a video call and processed the settlement on the same call.

It’s the same phone call throughout. We switch to video, look at the TV and validate the claim. Then we can Google it and say, yes, that model is still available for £300 and process the transfer all on the same call. The team can’t believe how quick it is, and neither can the customers, who just can’t believe we’ve settled their claim that quickly. And afterwards it isn’t sitting in anybody’s workflow, because it’s in and out.

Cash settlement is quicker for both sides. When is it the right outcome?

It depends on the policy wording first of all, because some of our gadget policies are only insured to receive a refurbished device, so those are likely to come through us.
But for something like a TV, replacement can actually cost the insurer more. You’re paying a supplier to go and collect it, another cost to do a report on it, and then more again to ship it back out, so you can be close to £100 before you have even covered the cost of the TV. This also takes more time for the customer to get a resolution. The principle we work to is that we don’t want to appoint a supplier just for the sake of it – we want to do the right thing at the right time.
Equally, if a customer tells us they don’t want a cash settlement and asks us to replace it, then absolutely we can, that’s not a problem at all. For example, if it’s an elderly person who doesn’t want to be going out shopping for a TV and arranging a delivery, we can sort all of that out. So, it depends on the customer and the policy they’ve got.

How do you evidence a loss when the customer has no receipt?

For a mobile phone we can obtain the last time it was used from the network, and proof that it’s been blocked. That’s an anti-fraud step, because you wouldn’t block a phone you were still actively using. But with a watch, or anything with no SIM card that isn’t connected to a network, we can’t do that.
Realistically, a lost claim for anything other than a mobile phone is one you struggle with. You obtain proof of purchase, and beyond that you have to take the customer’s word for it to a degree, because a loss is a loss.
Where there’s no receipt, if the item was a gift we can ask for confirmation from whoever gifted it, and photographs of them wearing the item or a bank statement will do just as well. That is where having the judgement of experienced handlers really helps.

What do you expect around the September iPhone launch?

We’ll see a lot of lost mobile phone claims in the days running up to it and a lot of requests for cash settlements. What you find is that customers will say, can I just take the cash, because I’m going to put it towards buying the new iPhone, I might as well get the latest one out. We get that a lot.
One pattern we watch for is a claim for a handset reported lost before it was ever activated. Network activation and usage data answers that question quickly. It resolves the small number of claims that do not stand up, and just as importantly it means the large majority of genuine claims are not slowed down while we look into them.

What does that tell you about the run-up to Christmas?

The same dynamic across a wider range of items. We’ll be checking what the season’s in demand products will be, such as a new Xbox or PlayStation release, a new MacBook, and other products.
VR headsets were a big thing last year and the year before, so is that still a thing this year? Then it’s making sure that we’re tightening our questions on those high-profile gadgets.
It isn’t only gadgets though. In the run-up to Christmas you’ll see paint spillages on carpets, dining room tables or sofas being damaged. Sometimes we find that it is because somebody is hosting Christmas for all of their family and needs a larger table, so it’s looking at those damage claims on general contents items and really making sure we’re validating them as well as we possibly can.

Video helps a lot here as well. If we’re doing the triage on a video call, we can talk the customer through it while we’re looking at it and ask the right questions at that point, rather than going back and forth afterwards. It means we can make a decision there and then.
The other thing to expect is the same customer pressure we’ve seen this summer, and probably more of it. Money is tighter in December, people are hosting family and want everything to be right, and that comes through in how the call goes. The dining table claims are a good example, because underneath one of those there’s often somebody worried about how Christmas is going to go. It’s worth handlers going in knowing that, because how you handle somebody under that kind of pressure matters as much as the validation does.

What’s the standard you want claims handled to?

I don’t think customers should ever need to phone us because we should be phoning them so they should always know exactly what’s going on.
When I pick up an inbound call about an existing claim, the first thing I’m asking myself is why this customer is phoning us at all, and what we can do to stop that. The day one settlements are the clearest version of getting that right, because the claim is done. It’s in and out, and there’s nothing left for anyone to chase.