Policyholders have been warned against telling “white lies” at claim time after a couple were caught being dishonest over damage to their car.

The New Zealand couple said their vehicle was damaged when the husband drove it into a brick fence at a friend’s house, hitting the front driver’s side and passenger door.

But their insurer’s repairer found damage appeared to have been caused by three separate incidents, noting there were impacts in other areas including the rear.  

The driver said he hit the brick fence with both sides of his car before backing into a letterbox.  

But the insurer declined the claim after an investigator used Google images of the property to conclude there was “no sign of a letterbox being in a position that the insured would have been able to collide with”. It declined the claim and cancelled the policy.  

The driver’s wife later admitted the damage to the rear occurred in a supermarket car park.

But she lodged a complaint with New Zealand’s Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme, saying the insurer’s questioning had caused her distress.  

The dispute scheme says the investigations were appropriate.  

“Even if [the complainant] had not known how the damage to the back of the vehicle occurred, as the driver of the vehicle, [her husband] knew when and how the damage occurred,” ombudsman Karen Stevens said.

“He knowingly gave a false statement when he claimed he ‘dented the back when he hit their letterbox’. The false statement was relevant to the claim, because it indicated [he] had attempted to include damage from another event in the claim, to avoid paying a separate policy excess.”  

Ms Stevens says “honesty is always the best policy” and even “little white lies” can lead to loss of coverage.