Insurance company Aviva has revealed a selection of its more unusual insurance claims to support new marketing campaign.

The company says from phones dropped in custard, to cars pelted by potatoes, Aviva’s claims handlers have seen it all. The accounts of these incidents have been released to coincide with a new TV advertising campaign which launched after Christmas.  

Some examples are:

A motor insurance customer encountered an oncoming tractor pulling a trailer of potatoes. The potatoes flew off the trailer and the policyholder’s car was bombarded. When reporting the incident he commented: “There were no injuries but there were some chips from where the potatoes hit the car.”

One customer panicked when a spider ran up her leg while driving, causing her to bump into a parked vehicle.

A drone hit a customer’s house, knocking off a roof-tile. Both the roof-tile and the drone then fell onto the customer’s car which was parked in the drive, damaging the vehicle’s door and roof.

One policyholder was waiting in their vehicle outside a cricket club when a cricket ball flew out of the ground and dented the bonnet. The club advised it was the third time that week such an incident had happened.

Aviva assisted one customer after his car was struck by a toilet cistern which fell from a passing tipper truck.

Another customer found herself in a sticky situation after spilling a can of coke in her car boot after being startled by a wasp. The liquid seeped into the vehicle’s electrics, causing damage to the audio and sat-nav system.

Chickens sometimes do cross roads, as a policyholder found when she braked to avoid a hen. The car was hit from behind causing bumper damage, but the chicken made it to the other side.

Gareth Hemming, MD, Personal Lines for Aviva commented, “From the everyday unusual to the downright bizarre, we encounter all sorts of claims from our customers, the kinds where people say “you had to be there!” Insurance is designed in case of the unforeseen and unexpected and as our claims experience shows, we see plenty of situations which couldn’t have been predicted!”