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Spate of car break-ins


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My mate has a 56 plate VW Caravelle and he found it unlocked on Sunday morning with the sat-nav gone from the glovebox along with the Bluetooth headphones for the in-roof DVD player. He blamed his wife for leaving it unlocked.

Over the weekend he got talking to a few of the neighbours and they had also found their cars unlocked on Sunday morning with sat-navs, sunglasses and other stuff taken.

He rang me about this today and I rang my wife who works for the Police. She has had a look on their system and on Saturday night, 22 cars on three surrounding streets have reported finding their cars unlocked with stuff taken. It is highly likely that more people have had theirs done but either not reported it or not had anything stolen and not bothered to report it.

My wife was rattling off a list of the cars that had been done and they were all pretty new cars:

07 Mini, 09 BMW 3 Series, 11 plate Insignia, 09 Fiesta, 57 plate Golf. Can't remember the rest but WTF????? What kind of equipment have these people got???

Surely they can't have been hanging around to clone the signal from that many remotes could they?? Anyway, I didn't think they could do that with modern remotes?

:confused::o:o

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Who was it on here that posted something similar a couple of months back about having the car broken into, I thought it was pinched in that example as well?

Slightly worrying, wonder if anyone is looking into it seriously as a set of connected events?

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Slightly worrying, wonder if anyone is looking into it seriously as a set of connected events?

In this case, yes they are all being investigated as connected.

Thing is, whatever kit they are using to get into the cars it can't be cheap can it??? Is there really that much money in second hand satnavs and sunglasses etc. On the odd occasion they might get lucky and find something valuable I suppose.

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This is probably a case of the thieves leaving a remote locking jammer in the area - most car remote locking systems work on the same approved frequency so can easily be blocked. You press the remote lock fob and assume the car has locked. Jammer prevents car from locking - thief waits until early hours of morning and then raids all the cars in the area. This happened to a guy on m3torque who fortunately had pir activated cctv coverage showing them doing this for his car and other cars in the road.

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This is probably a case of the thieves leaving a remote locking jammer in the area - most car remote locking systems work on the same approved frequency so can easily be blocked. You press the remote lock fob and assume the car has locked. Jammer prevents car from locking - thief waits until early hours of morning and then raids all the cars in the area. This happened to a guy on m3torque who fortunately had pir activated cctv coverage showing them doing this for his car and other cars in the road.

Could that be the case with so many cars though?

Is it just me that makes sure the lights flash and I can see/ hear the doors lock then?

Nope. I do that as well!

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This is probably a case of the thieves leaving a remote locking jammer in the area - most car remote locking systems work on the same approved frequency so can easily be blocked. You press the remote lock fob and assume the car has locked. Jammer prevents car from locking - thief waits until early hours of morning and then raids all the cars in the area. This happened to a guy on m3torque who fortunately had pir activated cctv coverage showing them doing this for his car and other cars in the road.

I hadn't heard of that technique.

Fortunately I always enable the beep on a new car so I know if it's locked or not. Feck what the Europrats say about no more beeping alarms.

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I don't know if its to do with messing with old landies and rangies and other £500 bangers. But I always walk round our cars and try all the handles before retiring for the night. Forms part of my routine.

Check cars, lock front door, get pint of water for bed, close all doors/windows down stairs as I come through the house.

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Is it just me that makes sure the lights flash and I can see/ hear the doors lock then?

No, I'm quite obsessive as well. The 5 has keyless access, so I have to touch the handle - which makes you watch the lock so that you know when you can let go. The 911 brings out my inner OCD, I always have to try the door handles.

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Like a few others, probably a lot of others, I like to hear the car lock and I've even returned to it to see if the little door locks have gone door even if I hear it (or think I hear it but aren't sure).

I'd be surprised if it was a jammer because surely most people will do this anyway?

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Well .... this I think has now happened to me....

Am absolutely certain I locked car last night, can't check handles as the Jag has keyless entry, woke up this morning to find some of the contents of my car on the driveway..... the drivers door slightly ajar.... and my golf clubs gone from the boot!!!!

All the doors are unlocked.... which makes you question yourself... did I really lock it ..... but I remember pressing button...... and I'm OCD about this stuff... weird thing is when I started the car this morning, after police confirmed it was ok to do so... all the trip computers on the dashboard have been reset!! I never reset them as like to know what average mpg I've done since I got the car!!

Can't believe it to be honest... and the insurance are saying without visible signs of forcible entry they won't pay out! Won't be seeing me on a golf course anytime soon then I guess..

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and the insurance are saying without visible signs of forcible entry they won't pay out! Won't be seeing me on a golf course anytime soon then I guess..

This is what would drive me absolutely insane. This basically means that if you notice this has happened to you you should smash your own window to make sure you can get the pay out.

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Gutted for you Newbie!

At least they didnt wreck the inside of the car (im presuming as you never mentioned any damage) so it could have been a lot worse especially since the insurance company wont pay out.

Insurance Companies and the fraud dept of Banks are always one step behind the thieves new technology and as such always deny that something can happen if they have never come across it before.

Back in 2002 i had large amounts of cash withdrawn from the hole in the wall outside the branch i was with at the time. They told me the monies was taken at X time and i told them the wallet was with me in my room at my family home at the time while i was asleep. I asked them to show me the CCTV footage as i can grantee it wasn't my card being used at the time but they were having none of it going on about if i had ever given my pin code out.

To cut a long story short they said they would refund the monies but will be closing my account and i would not be able to bank with them again. Low and behold 6 months down the line it was on the news about people cloning cards and taking monies from cash points! Till this day i wanted to go into that branch and give the Manager (who obviously wont be there now) a piece of my mind but i tried to raise above it!

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Yeah thankfully there was no vandalism inside....they just tipped everything out of door pockets etc and basically flung everything around. Bizarrely though they didn't go in the glovebox.... there was a satnav in there too....

Now I don't know if they were being clever or not .... but for anyone who knows the Jag XF the glovebox doesn't have a catch ... you have to run your finger across a little sensor.... I'm wondering if they didn't want to leave finger prints...not sure it works with gloves on. They've certainly done no damage trying to force it open either...

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Soulboy, Tried the car insurance first (directline) basically their claim limit for personal items is £100!!! excess is £400... so obviously that was a non-starter anyway they said as much themselves...

Home insurance is Directline too... They said yes clubs would have been covered if there had been evidence of forcible entry to vehicle...... as there wasn't they said it was excluded...

Now I haven't given up on the Home Insurance, and I have a meeting with the Officers tonight to pickup some items they wanted that they maybe able to fingerprint...CD's etc...and I'm going to ask about other incidents in the area. The insurers said if I can get it in writing from the police that there have been other instances of this they would then look at the claim again, but they weren't promising anything.

What annoys me.... if the clubs had been nicked from outside the golf club house for example.... I'm 99% certain they'd have to pay out... but becuase they were in something that can be secured.... ie the car.... and no force was used... they won't unless I can prove otherwise.

Car is booked into Jaguar first thing to see if they can pickup anything on their systems... not sure what they can analyse...

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