Season of good will Not

[Anonymous]

Went out the front door last night and found some Scumbag had been doing his xmas shopping in the back of my van.2 Dewalt Cordless drills,Bosch Planer, Bosch Jigsaw,and 2 Makita Routers all 110 Volt all gone .Hope he dies a slow and painful death .
So beware, his friends could be visiting your area soon :evil:

Merry Xmas
Cheers Steve

 

[Anonymous]

On a good note , I had taken my Makita chopsaw out of the van a few hours previous and put it in the workshop because i had to deliver a couple of units i had made out of MDF .Now if that had gone for a walk i would have been very very upset as oppossed to just very upset. See MDF has its good points

Cheers Steve

 

[johnelliott]

My commiserations, Steve. It would be good if a bunch of woodworkers could catch one of these people and do something unpleasant with him, pour encourager les autres, so to speak
John

 

[Midnight]

The Zulu had an ideal punishment for just this kinda thing... a kinda variation of a M&T joint... where the tennon is a tree trunk....sharpened to a point.... I'll leave the mortice to your imagination..

commiserations Steve

 

[Newbie_Neil]

LondonSteve

Sorry to hear about your visitors.

Cheers
Neil

 

[devonwoody]

What was wrong with your van!!!!!!!!!!!


Sorry about the joke, genuinely sorry to hear about the theft. I think the day will come though when small tracking devices cauld be fitted to these sort of things (like they do for motor cars) then you could do the
zulu trick.

 

[Guest]

I've just been reading about a device about the size of a mobile phone that you can place in a room/van? and if it detects movement will ring your mobile. Comes complete with camera so if its a false alarm you can ignore it, if not a false alarm it seems the law is coming round to see that injured burglars have nothing to complain about

 

[Anonymous]

Steve that is awful, especially this time of the year. Good will too all men??? Castrate and hang 'em if you catch them!

Does the van insurance cover the cost of replacements?

 

[Alf]

That stinks, Steve. What a Christmas present.

If it wasn't the time for goodwill and all that I'd be hoping they do themselves a damage on 'em. Oh what the heck -I hope they do anyway.

Cheers, Alf

 

[Woodythepecker]

Steve i am really sorry to hear of your bad news. Wasn't your van alarmed?

I maybe teaching you to suck eggs here but in this day and age if you keep tools or anything else that is valuable in your car/van you have got to have a decent alarm fitted. This not only protects your vechile and its contents but your insurers will give you a good discount (usually between 10% and 30%) if you have a "Thatchem category 1 or 2 alarm/immobilliser fitted. Thatchem is the body who tests them.

The alarms these days are really first class (with a lot less false alarms) and unless they are a professional or have hours to work on it the ordinary opportunist thief (which 90% of them are) will not by pass a cat 1 or 2 alarm.
The device Jaymar mentions is portable, but this sort of thing is also included in a lot of the better alarms. Some even take a photo of the scumbag that you can give to the police.
There are others called Trackers, which alert a monitoring service if your vechile is moved by the thief. This company will then track your car/van and also call the police and between them they can track it down to a few feet anywhere in the UK. These will cost you a bit more then a alarm because you have to pay a fee each year to the company who does the tracking, but if you have an expensive car or a lot of tools in your van they are worth it, because you can be asleep in bed and not even know that your van is gone and they will phone you.

You can also get things that look like micro dots (forget the name), which you put inside your car stereo or any of your power tools etc. You then register these with the manufacturer who takes all your details. Then if the police retrieve any stolen goods they can scan them and if they have these micro dots inside them they will know who the owner is.

The above really only scratches the surface of what these security devices can do.

Some of the best alarm manufacturers are Clifford, Toad and GT Auto Alarm. You can get alarms that are cheaper then these companies make but if you have got a lot of tools in your van you really need a cat 1 or 2 to protect them.

Hope this helps

Regards

Woody

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the words guys.The van came with an immobiliser on it from new, dont know why theyre not fitted with alarms aswell, maybe thats what i should get done in the new year.For now i will just reverse the van up against the workshop door which i should have been doing from the start.Now if only i can find the wifes credit card Mmmm

Cheers Steve

 

[devonwoody]

No good they use a tin opener to get in the van or drive the van off somewhere.

 

[Chris Knight]

I wonder if there is any law against fitting a cylinder of hydrogen cyanide coupled to the alarm system? Of course, you need to remember to disarm it before starting out in the morning!

 

[Adam]

I wonder if there is any law against fitting a cylinder of hydrogen cyanide coupled to the alarm system? Of course, you need to remember to disarm it before starting out in the morning!

Hmm, I have seen alarm systems that release smoke (dry ice type) on the basis if they can't see an inch infront of their nose, they are much less likely to nick your stuff (as most thiefs like a clear escape route).

Sorry to hear about your loss, just what you don't need for Xmas. Don't forget, they'll be back for more now they know what you've got - they normally wait about a couple of weeks or so, just to give you time to replace everything.

Could you secure the stuff inside the van in one of these "van vaults" I've seen in screwfix?

Adam

 

[Losos]

Steve please do not ignore Adams advice - They will definitely be back in a few weeks now they know you've got 'saleable' stuff in the van, and IMHO backing the van up to a wall etc. won't put them off. When I lived in a big English city (I won't say which one) we were 'done over' on Christmas eve, due to have a monitored alarm system, the Police caught one of them (Latter when he had moved on to another target) At interview he admitted he had been looking for kiddies presents because they were easy to offload in boot sales after Xmas :x

 

[Woodythepecker]

DW a good alarm will stop the scumbag from getting into your car whether he uses a can opener or a brick through the window. They employ a active system which monitors the vehicle's perimeter and if someone comes too near the car it will at first give them a verbal warning and after a set amount of time if this person does not back away from the car it will sound the siren.
If the thief gets past this and climbs though a broken window (depending on which alarm you have installed) he will come upon either a ultrasonic or microwave system. Both of these scan the interior of the vechile for any movement and if they detect any the alarm will sound.

Regards

Woody

 

[Vormulac]

Sorry to hear about this, Steve, happens to most of us at some point :evil:

I wonder if there is any law against fitting a cylinder of hydrogen cyanide coupled to the alarm system? Of course, you need to remember to disarm it before starting out in the morning!

I can think of two cases in the last 10 years or so where people took the sensible precaution of rigging up high voltage devices to their car door handles to discombuggerise any misanthrope trying their luck. In both cases they were hauled up in court because of course you're not allowed to hurt subhuman filth criminals, in one case they were prosecuted, in the other they got away with it - nice to see common sense AND parity in the legal system eh? :shock:

Steve, they may well have a return visit booked for your shiny new replacements, so is there any chance you could fill the back of your van with crowbar wielding navvies? That's the sort of 'immobiliser' that ought to be used on these low-lifes.

Vormulac "hanging's too good for 'em"

 

[Shady]

Very sorry about that mate - xx&%£!**...

It does however raise a thought in my mind. Lots of good advice here about the van, alarms and insurance... How many of us have actually and specifically covered our tools??

I'm not sure in my case - for a number of reasons, my home insurance is a bit special, and I suspect ( :roll: ) that I could claim for lost tools - after reading this post I'm gonna make it my business to confirm this - anyone else got a tool specific insurance policy they recommend or regard as useless?? advice on rough annual costs?

 

[Aragorn]

Sorry to hear about your tools Steve.

When working on site, we used to get guys coming round trying to sell us all sorts of tools - probably stolen from the next site along the road. Can you believe that some of the tradesmen bought them!!? An Estwing hammer for £5 was just too tempting for some!

Car alarms? Does anyone pay attention to those things? Suppose you did hear one going off and saw a couple of guys hanging out the car window, what would you do?

 

[Taffy Turner]

We used to have a lot of problems with people breaking into our cars parked outside the house (we are out in the country and a bit remote).

We bought a German Shepherd puppy. Once he got to six months old, all our problems miraculously stopped. He has been gone for nearly 5 years now and (touching wood frantically), no problems still. His reputation was known far and wide, and we still have the "Beware of the dog" signs up.

There is no better deterrent to scumbags than a big, hairy dog with an attitude! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: