Look Out, There's a Thief About (Again)

[adsgreen]

They were using the ad as an indicator that ther'd be other nice stuff there. Car was dumped after a short while.

[sonny]

Car was dumped after a short while.

Cool off period for tracker (if its fitted).

[Lewy1000]

There was a recent thread on here which contained a report from West Mids Police. They reckoned the RS4 was a #1 choice for thiefs as a get away car as it is fast, 4 doors and good for "stealth". Guess the same is true for the C63 though..

[ShouldveBeenAGerman]

Not what I wanted to read when I'm about to sell mine on Autotrader. Especially with a new baby in the house.

I'm tempted to meet them somewhere but then that'd put me right off as a buyer and as already mentioned above you've got to reveal your address at some point to the buyer. I guess it gives you time to suss him out though, but still.

Worrying.

[ShouldveBeenAGerman]

Thinking about it how would you feel as a buyer if I said this on the phone:

"Yes you are welcome to view mate, but due to the recent spate of gunpoint thefts of RS4's if we meet within a five minute drive of my house, bring some photo Id with you. You can have a look round and if you like it we'll drive back to my house to look though the paperwork/history etc"

[Ian_C]

Its probably a good habit to use your work postcode on Autotrader so your address cannot be traced by a seller without you giving it out. Autotrader uses the postcode to list "100 miles from seller" for example. As mentioned by David, allowing first viewings at work is a good solution. Car not parked there overnight, CCTV, lots of witnesses to see their car pull up etc etc

Ian

[PetrolDave]

Car was dumped after a short while.

Cool off period for tracker (if its fitted).

Which is why a Tracker is a complete waste of money - the pro car thieves know EXACTLY how to make them useless.

[PJC]

My BMW was found the same day thanks to a Tracker. It was parked up less than a mile from where it was stolen.

[adsgreen]

Car was dumped after a short while.

Cool off period for tracker (if its fitted).

Which is why a Tracker is a complete waste of money - the pro car thieves know EXACTLY how to make them useless.

How is it useless when the car is recovered?

[neckarsulm]

How is it useless when the car is recovered?

I think Dave means if you are unlucky enough to have your car stolen by a pro car thief, they know how to disable tracker and make it useless.
I wouldn't say it's a complete waste of money as not all car thieves are that bright, many are opportunist but the other issue is would you want it back?

[adsgreen]

if you fit a tracker then you're fitting it to get the car back. It does nothing to prevent a theft.
I don't call leaving the car for a couple days "pro car" thief technology and hardly disables it or makes it useless. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do and locate and return the car.
I own a tracker-esque company and there's no getting away from the fact that even though they are a competitor they have the most resilient system to any method of attack. 10 quid from ebay gets you a jammer that'll wipe out any GPS based system. Go to 30 quid and you can get a combined GPS/GSM system. However the multi frequency hopping VHF system tracker use whilst relatively short range pretty much every traffic car and mobile phone mast has a receiver.

When the scrotes nick construction units they usually put a couple hundred volts through the chassis. Surprisingly the unit survives this bar a couple blown fuses but the trackers generally melt. Battery life is a problem too. I have one case where a number diggers were nicked during the night and they used them to dig a hole and bury them for a couple months until the batteries were flat.

[sonny]

I have a tracker fitted...but to be fair, would you want your car back after its been stolen, ragged and used in a crime?

[adsgreen]

Agreed - that's why I don't have an official tracking system. Not worth the initial outlay given that the insurance saving is negligable.
If you want to stop the car being used this way then an RFID based immobiliser/alarm with a delay is the best bet.

[MB2]

I supose the real lesson is if your car goes drive around the local area the next day as could well be round the corner waiting for the tracker to show up or not...

[PetrolDave]

Unless and until Tracker are prepared to publish figures of how many cars fitted with a Tracker are NOT recovered then I will regard them as a complete wste of money. Why?

OK so Tracker recover (say) 5,000 cars per year - but if they don't recover 100,000 then that's pretty rubbish, howevere if they don't recover 10 then that's damn good. The fact that they won't publish the figure suggests it's more like the higher figure than the lower figure. If that's wrong then all then need to do is make the figures public.

Incomplete statistics = meaningless statistics.