Trackers and takems
On the Car Mechanics tour of Germany in 2015, I was constantly being pestered by phone calls from the people at Tracker telling me that the annual subscription for the Tracker fitted to my caravan was due. As my caravan is kept more than 100 miles from my home and is insured on the basis of an active Tracker being fitted, such pestering was, in reality, a service.
In 2016, nobody called to remind me. Nobody wrote or emailed me. Eventually I got a letter saying I’d been disconnected. Now there is an element of personal responsibility to this, but over the past four years, I’d got used to being pestered by these people for my subs, so I’d never made a note of the renewal date.
It took three days to get through to resubscribe, so you can imagine my snotty attitude. The gent on the other end of the phone apologised and said they were rushed off their feet due to thefts of cars, primarily 4x4s. This I could sympathise with, because one night, a handful of high-end and previously sold under the hammer 4x4s were stolen from the upper stowage yard at Manheim in Washington. Exact details of the heist are sketchy as the management of said remarketing facility haven’t commented on their loss. It’s believed the thieves broke into the compound and drove the cars away and onto a presumably stolen transporter. These 4x4s were recovered in bits in ocean-bound shipping containers ready for export.
However, I do wonder how the buyers of a 4x4 which is subsequently stolen are compensated? Is it a question of getting back their purchase price or the retail value? After all, it’s a good day’s work to trek to an auction and buy a good car. So to hear of it being lifted must be bloody annoying. But take this tale as a warning to the lengths the pilfering fraternity are going in order to get their hands on a 4x4. Be sure to keep up the payments on your Tracker service.