Tracker - is it worth it?

John · Dec 11, 2011

Original post swingle

Will hopefully be ordering my Cali on Saturday (discount-dependant!)

Dealer is pushing getting a tracker fitted ... if I understand him correctly, for an up front £750, it will be fitted and monitored ... for ever (i.e. no ongoing annual subscription fees). Other options have lower initial cost, but with an annual subscription.

Is it worth having one fitted?

I'm thinking £48K (or less, with a decent discount!) is a lot of vehicle to lose, so anything that keeps it safe must help?

Cali will be used daily and parked on the street, so I'm inclined to get one fitted ...

Also, looks like insurance companies give a 10% (?) discount if a monitored tracker is fitted? (Although that was deduced from Comfort's webpage - and 10% of an already *VERY* low policy isn't really much of a saving.)

John · Dec 11, 2011

Original post T5WOB

hide a pay as you go phone in the van in the safe .have to make the odd call to keep it live .you can track the phone if van goes missing ,simples

John · Dec 11, 2011

Original post californiaman

I spoke to a friend that works in the police - traffic. They've never yet failed to recover a vehicle with a tracker.co.uk fitted.

I like the idea of a PAYG mobile but anyone that intends to nick one of these will probably have a gsm signal blocker. You can get them next day delivery off e-bay.

CaliandtheMinions · Dec 23, 2011

A bit of a late reply but....

I have fitted a tracker system for the same reasons you stated.... £48K++++

Tracker.co.uk have the monopoly on the name and charge for it. There are plenty of other as good/better systems out there that also get full police response and cost about a 3rd of the price. (I have contact details if you need them).
Cheers.

MickyBlue · Dec 23, 2011

I will reiterate some info from one of my previous posts, but here goes.

1.Some insurance companies 'require' a tracker for a policy due to capital value/theft history/post code so you may have little choice in fitting one.

2.Most insurance companies have an approved list of systems, some based on their Thatcham ratings (TQA, Category 6, or Category 5, which is the highest).

3.The discount given generally is never going to outweigh the cost of the system fitting, or the ongoing monitoring cost IMHO.

4.Some insurance companies & brokers (Comfort being one example it seems) who are only giving discount/accepting Cat 5 trackers. This may become a trend....Hopefully not though.

The system your dealer is mentioning is probably a Cobra Trak 5 which is a Thatcham Cat 5 system, and hence the most expensive, but also one of the best & most reliable on the market. It is marketed by many manufacturers as their own, in fact the reason VW dealers use it is prob because it is marketed by Audi as their system

This is the system they are most likely quoting

http://www.cobravehiclesecurity.co.uk/products/gps-vehicle-tracking/cobratrak-5-.aspx

swigle · Dec 23, 2011

Get the fitter/seller/dealer to confirm the Thatcham rating - I've been sold CobraTrak First Mobile (£760, fitted + lifetime subscription, no annual fee) by VW dealer, which is 'only' Cat 6, so probably won't be qualifying for insurance discount. But my reasoning for getting it fitted wasn't related to insurance discount - more for piece of mind, as I don't have off-street parking or garage so it will be parked on road all the time - and round my way, that could actually be a couple of streets away. Probably not an issue where I live really (they are more likely to abandon cars down my street than steal them), but I'll sleep easier knowing I've got a bit extra security on it.

Steve
(9 weeks, 6 days, 19 hours to go before I pick up the Cali, but who's counting?)

MickyBlue · Dec 23, 2011

I didn't realise they did a lifetime of ownership subscription & it was included in your quoted price.

The Cobra Trak 5 is £6-800 purely for the unit fitting. The subscription is ~£215 pa

Gary&Heather · Dec 23, 2011

Hi everyone
Now Tracker is it worth it a few years ago i had a shogun it had to be fitted with a tracking device for insurance purpases wich i thaught at the time was a waste of money so i chose tracker because thay had the highest rate of sucsess. we were christmas shopping in newcastle the car was stolen from the time it was reported to the time it was found
it was just over 6 hours.now to the presant day my daughter was selling her sports car it was advertised from our property a man asked if he could look round the car im usualy
causious but he asked all the right questions we went on a test drive at first he didnt want to drive the car but in end i pursuaided him to

shortly after that he assulted me
and pushed me out off the car and drove off from the time of it been reported to the time it was found was 55 mins. we pick our new cali up tomorrow ( christmas eve ) it has
been fitted with tracker locate because we have a tracker on our cali now we have benerfited from there loyalty sceme. what im trying to say is tracker has saved us a lot of
time, money and sorrow.

P.S 15 hours and 8 mins to pick up

Gary & Heather

Merry Christmas to you all.

california180 · Dec 24, 2011

All the best for tomorrow Gary&Heather......bet you can't sleep

greenfintry · Jul 5, 2013

Re: Tracker - which is best?

Thinking of fitting one of these for all the usual,reasons.... The Toad one looks reasonable value for fit and lifetime cover for whole,of Europe inc N Africa and Russia £800.

Anyone got any experience or views on other options etc?.

choplee · Jul 5, 2013

greenfintry said:
Thinking of fitting one of these for all the usual,reasons.... The Toad one looks reasonable value for fit and lifetime cover for whole,of Europe inc N Africa and Russia £800.

Anyone got any experience or views on other options etc?.

I would rather not have my Cali back if it was stolen and fiddled with ,so I'm a big no for a Cali tracker unless it brings my insurance down by how much the tracker costs ....

MidgleyVW · Feb 13, 2014

My question is ...Does the California need any additional alarms to what is already there?
Can they be broken into a driven away ?
Has anyone had a Cali taken without the key?
Mine is down our drive and a way from the main road so I dont think it can be lifted?
I think i would rather have a additional interior alarm that woke me up if anyone started to tamper with it
My other concern was if your wild camping and miles from nowhere what do you do if a bunch of gypsies wake you in the night > > ? And forced to hand over the keys
Has anyone had this experience and what would be the situation with the insurance
Thanks

gatvol · Feb 17, 2014

I am quite encouraged that no-one in the tony blair PC brigade has trolled you yet - the folk that are happy to see hundreds of thousands die in an illegal war, but think that shortlist is a term that short people might feel is offensive. Folk on the forum can be quite sensitive about anything that remotely could be considered as discrimination.

I had a tracker already fitted in my Audi S5 (I bought it as a demo) when it was new. My insurers offered no discount for using it, so I didn't bother activating it.

Normally I think that Trackers are a waste of money, unless you can't get insurance any other way OR they pay for themselves with reduced premia. If your car gets nicked, you might not actually want it back. I was in a Nissan garage once and I saw the state that a recovered-stolen car that was in for repair. There is a school of thought that if your car gets nicked, you are better off never seeing it again. The expression "drive it like you stole it" exists for a reason

BUT if you are worried about the van being stolen whilst wild camping, it may well make sense to get a tracker. If your get robbed by scumbags whilst wild camping, you could be in for an absolute nightmare with the insurers. Dear Mr X, can you prove that your car was stolen and that you did not just lose the key ? Where is the evidence of a break in ? Why are you not beaten up ? Is there CCTV of the incident ? At the very least you will be in for a one hour grilling and cross examination by a trained insurance investigator who will try to make you feel like a criminal and for whom reducing victims of crime to tears is seen as part of the job.

If you are worried about this you ought to establish the insurer's approach to carjacking before you insure with them.

If you get it wrong, the services of Max Clifford and some coverage in the red tops may be required to help get fair treatment from the insurers in a case like this. I do recall a period when carjacked folk (nice car at traffic lights, scum come at you with a knife) had nightmares with insurers. But at least they might have had a witness, or local CCTV to show the aftermath. If you are wild camping in a Cali, "proving" theft could be quite tricky