'Tracker' - (UK- quite long)

Hi,

I was just wondering if anyone has any thoughts about this, or perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree?

A couple of weeks ago I was car-jacked and my beloved M3 is now gone.

A couple of 'coincidences' occurred before this happened, and I was curious as to whether I'm paranoid or not.

About 6 weeks ago I had a soft-top failure. Rather than take the car back to the original dealership (75 miles away), I was reluctantly persuaded by them to take it to my local dealer in Stanmore, Middx (Scotthall), as it was thought to be very minor.

It seemed that the fault was deep within the electrical system and they took about 4 days to fix it.

After 2 days, the tracker company phoned me twice to tell me that there had been an activation. I told them it was OK as it was in the workshop. It was nice to know that it worked though.

The dealer also phoned me on the 3rd morning to tell me that they had 'lost my key'. I gave them the spare, and they organised a replacement key which was given to me when the car was eventually returned.

The new key was not re-programmed to lock my doors once I pulled away.

2 weeks later I was car-jacked. The thief's were extremely professional, and seemed to be aware that my door would be unlocked. They had no weapons to threaten me with, but just pulled the doors open and bundled me out. (It was obvious that this wasn't their 1st time).

They immediately drove off in my car and also the car they had been using (a Golf gti, also stolen that day).

I immediately called tracker and the police. The police helicopter was up within 7 or 8 minutes and was doing a tracker scan for my car (20 mile radius from the air). All local police units had been informed and were standing by on all major routes with tracker equipment (5 mile ground radius).

The car was not detected by any unit. 2 weeks later, there is still no sign.

I asked tracker last week why there was no result, and they said that with the police response at the time, they were very surprised it was not recovered, They felt that the unit was probably faulty.

Whilst accepting that the car is probably not in the UK any longer, I cannot help but wonder if an individual at the dealership set me up by disabling the security locks, and then disabling the tracker system whilst the car was being worked upon.

I'd love to know if anyone has heard of a similar incident, and if anyone has any wisdom to share with me on this.

BTW thanks to all of you that responded to my previous post, and to let you know that I took your unanimous advice and ordered a 911S Cabriolet for October build. (IOW, I get to enjoy the wife's Ford Focus for another 3-4 months.......sob)

TIA

Harry

Reply to
Harry
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"Harry" wrote

I'd be suspicious - have you mentioned this to the police and dealership?

Floyd

Reply to
fbloogyudsr

I'd certainly speak to the police about this but definitely NOT the dealership. How do you know who is involved at the dealership (if anyone) and who it is safe to discuss this with?

My understanding of Tracker (and I accept I may be wrong) was that it "checked in" every day just to let the system know it was working. Is this not the case? If my thinking is correct then it can't have been de-activated whilst at the dealers or it would have missed it's next programmed call hopefully eliciting some response from the control room.

Reply to
SteveG

First off, sorry to hear about your experience. At least yout weren't injured or worse. After all it's only metal however much we might love our cars!

Personally I'd recount your story to the police who are/were investigating. It does sound a little too much of a coincidence but its very easy to read too much into a situation. Certainly worth telling them though.

Reply to
TonyK

Totally agree. If there is any element of an inside job, then the police are more likely to be able to deal with it than anyone. If you start stomping around you will probably just alert the criminals and may get threatened or set up.

The other key item in this story is literally that - did you get the spare key(s) back? If not where are they now? If the dealer did not or can not return them then this would be more grounds for suspicion.

OTOH the police will also doubtless be considering that you are implicated - so be prepared for some heat!

Reply to
R. Mark Clayton

Out of curiosity, who pays what in this instance -- where Tracker failed to track your car? Obviously insurance pays the bulk of it... do your rates go up? Does tracker pay your deductible? What sort of replacement do you get? etc.

-Russ.

Reply to
Somebody

Just for the record I install tracking systems for a living, mainly for commercial fleet services rather than security. However tracker should be able to put a trace on the last time the unit sent a Poll and GPS location data, obviously if it shows entering the BMW workshop and nothing thereafter, together with someone in that organisation loosing the key, id be VERY suspicious and speak with the police.

As already mentioned, I wouldn't speak to the dealer just yet........

Ash

Reply to
Ash

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