Record-time stolen car recovery
Solicitor Jocelyn Wang’s 2006 Daihatsu Charade was stolen from near her West London home after thieves somehow snatched her car keys.
But within 45 minutes of reporting it missing, the car was spotted by Police who phoned to say they’d found it. And when Jocelyn got her car back, she found it had even been cleaned
“It was an amazing two hours from end-to-end. Somehow my keys were stolen when I parked near home, and I returned to an empty parking space,” said Jocelyn.
“I thought that was the last I’d see of my car, because I’m told it would be easy to change its identity and sell on. I phoned the Police, started to think about how I’d get to work, what I might have left in the car, about getting a replacement car – the inconvenience would be massive.
“It was pretty obvious the thieves were caught out too. It was quite bizarre:
they took my car, and the first thing they did was to clean it and remove all the rubbish. I was told this was because they were probably planning to sell it on to somebody who would give it a new identity.
“But they’d barely got more than a few streets away when they were tracked down by Police – and the Policeman stayed on the line even as he was running through the streets chasing the thieves.
“I got the car back intact, and cleaner than when it was taken.”
Paul Stacy of Coverbox said: “Many people seem to believe theft tracking is only for expensive cars, but, in truth, people who own expensive cars can generally get into another set of wheels very easily.
“It’s the theft of ‘workaday’ cars that cause the biggest problems – commuters, mums, grandparents looking after children – who don’t have easy access to a replacement car.
“And that’s where theft tracking really comes into its own. The system we use is proven technology and most vehicles reported as stolen are returned within 48 hours, many of them completely intact – and a surprising number cleaned and valeted.”
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