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Our Car Has Been Stolen

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Benjamin Sherwin

Benjamin Sherwin

Free Member
Jan 21, 2016
43
9
South Wales
Me and my wife live in a converted 19th Century church and the size of the property means that a you could be using power tools at one end of the property and not hear a thing at the other end.

We had guests over this week and we were all relaxing in the living room. One of our guests took the babies nappy outside to the bin and forgot to lock the door. Someone later came into our home, took a set of keys and drove off with our car. Obviously we didn't hear anything and It wasn't until we said goodbye to our guests that we noticed our car had gone. The police later found it a few miles away burnt out in a field.

Insurance is a wonderful thing and the car can easily be replaced but it's certainly been an interesting Easter weekend. Nothing like this has ever happened to us before.

Do you have your own story of something similar that has happened to you?
 
My dad used to have a Ford Luton van. It was stolen and was used in a robbery on a motorcycle dealership.

The dealership is where my step dad works as a mechanic. To this day my mum still thinks my dad had something to do with it!
 
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Will insurance pay out in those circumstances? If they didn't even need to force an entry to get the keys you were hardly fulfilling your duty of care to keep the vehicle secure.
 
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Our car was stolen, but recovered by the police and taken to a local station, a little bit of damage and a missing number plate, but only £100 or so to get fixed the next day.

Soon after getting it fixed I was pulled over by the police, who wanted to immediately arrest me for theft of petrol from a garage the night before!!!!

When I asked them what time I was supposed to have stolen the petrol, they said 10.48pm, which was lucky for me, as the car was in the police station garage at the time.

The little scroats who took the car had used my number plate of their own car to fill up.

Fortunately, I was in the clear, but I hate to think what they would have done had the car not been found before the petrol was stolen.
 
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How on earth this intruder found your car key if it was not an insider job, one of your guest, the one disposed your baby's nappy, has a hand in it for sure.:p
 
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CCTV + PIR connected to the DVR with a flat screen monitor installed in close proximity to the TV (If you watch the TV) as soon as the PIR is broken your monitor will come alive alerting you of movement.

Use it as a 2 fold instrument for security - one camera on the main entrance one camera on the drive.

Job done. :)
 
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Haunted Worlds said:
CCTV + PIR connected to the DVR with a flat screen monitor installed in close proximity to the TV (If you watch the TV) as soon as the PIR is broken your monitor will come alive alerting you of movement.

Use it as a 2 fold instrument for security - one camera on the main entrance one camera on the drive.

Job done. :)
Click to expand...

Or just lock the door / don't leave your keys just the other side of an unlocked door.
 
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You can't leave others to the security of your own home. :)

If you didn't want to go to the expense of CCTV (which can and does act as a deterrent to would be burglars)... then have a night latch installed on the door once it's closed it's locked from the outside.

Failing that i.e. if it's a UPVC door set or composite door set you can always have the mechanism replaced for £160 (ish) pending on your area to a key operated latch mechanism, thus locking the door on the external side without the use of a key - or alternatively there is always the Winkhaus mechanism or a GU mechanism which locks the door automatically with the hooks/latches/bolts, slightly more expensive at £200 ish pending on your area.

IF you're not sure, always ask an MLA Approved Locksmith. :)
 
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About 30 years ago, I used to repair electronic equipment to try & keep a crust on the the table...I was stony broke.

A neighbour asked me to repair his video recorder...they were fiendishly complicated things, but being desperate I said I'd take a look. I opened the case & immediately found the problem ...a fuse had blown on the main circuit board. "Yes, result" ...I popped in a new fuse...& sure enough it fired up...I went to bed content of a quick clean kill. I woke up the next morning came downstairs to find our sofa pushed up against the door into our living room.....yep, we'd been burgled. My own video recorder was stolen along with the one I'd just repaired...oh how I laughed at having to shell out for a replacement for him...as the saying goes "it never rains, it pours"
 
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My mums car was once stolen 3 times in 2 weeks.
The third time it was stolen was 12 hours after she had got it back and it still had the forensics stuff on it as she had not managed to get it to the car wash. Locked everytime and in a works car park. Probably around 20 years ago that.
 
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billmccallum1957 said:
Our car was stolen, but recovered by the police and taken to a local station, a little bit of damage and a missing number plate, but only £100 or so to get fixed the next day.

Soon after getting it fixed I was pulled over by the police, who wanted to immediately arrest me for theft of petrol from a garage the night before!!!!

When I asked them what time I was supposed to have stolen the petrol, they said 10.48pm, which was lucky for me, as the car was in the police station garage at the time.

The little scroats who took the car had used my number plate of their own car to fill up.

Fortunately, I was in the clear, but I hate to think what they would have done had the car not been found before the petrol was stolen.
Click to expand...

This tickled me...
 
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Benjamin Sherwin said:
Me and my wife live in a converted 19th Century church and the size of the property means that a you could be using power tools at one end of the property and not hear a thing at the other end.

We had guests over this week and we were all relaxing in the living room. One of our guests took the babies nappy outside to the bin and forgot to lock the door. Someone later came into our home, took a set of keys and drove off with our car. Obviously we didn't hear anything and It wasn't until we said goodbye to our guests that we noticed our car had gone. The police later found it a few miles away burnt out in a field.

Insurance is a wonderful thing and the car can easily be replaced but it's certainly been an interesting Easter weekend. Nothing like this has ever happened to us before.

Do you have your own story of something similar that has happened to you?
Click to expand...

Posting this on a public forum does not constitute an albie for doing an insurance job on your car!
 
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A few of you have a few interesting stories of your own it would seem.

Having our car stolen has never been a concern for us. We live on a nice quiet street in a really good neighbourhood and we simply never expected for someone to open a closed gate, walk down a garden path, open the door to our home and take off with our car. All around 3pm on a Saturday with a house full of people?! Opportunists. Got to give them credit for being that ballsy.

The car hasn't been found but thankfully we now have a new one.
 
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AllUpHere said:
Will insurance pay out in those circumstances? If they didn't even need to force an entry to get the keys you were hardly fulfilling your duty of care to keep the vehicle secure.
Click to expand...
I disagree. I have never seen any such distinguishment in an insurance agreement.
 
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Of course people have a duty of care to try to reduce the chance of theft - that was covered when the OP took the keys into his home.

The fact that a "chancer" walked into the property does not mean that the OP did not fulfill his duty of care.

It is down to luck that the criminal found the door unlocked and the keys to the vehicle sat wherever they were in the property - this meant that there was no confrontation, no struggle to get away with a theft... had the criminal walked in and found no keys to hand - who is to say what could have happened for the crime to still take place.

The fact that the OP was entertaining guests doesn't matter - anything could of happened - during any criminal activity a victim is always told to comply with the criminals demands - therefore the criminal would have got away with keys whether confronted or not.

Such a criminal is not going to enter a property empty handed.
 
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I had a new car stolen this way - I had had it 2 weeks.
Thieves broke into the house at night while we were asleep. Found the keys and took the car.

It was never seen again. Police were sure it was stolen to order from a tip-off within DVLA or an insurance company.

Norwich Union have refused to insure me ever since.
 
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