Stolen caravan

[ReverendJT]

Hello,

Please could you keep an eye out for it. I doubt it will be seen again but don't want the thieves to get away with it if possible.

The reason u won't be joining you on the road this summer is because my caravan was stolen only a couple of weeks ago from a 'secure' compound. The thieves oxy acetylened off my two Alko wheel locks and my Alko Premium hitchlock. They also disabled my tracker, standard Swift, and dragged it out across fields through a gap in the rear fence (thick stroll bars) where they had also cut. It was the only caravan stolen however others were broken into. They also disabled the closest CCTV camera just a day prior to the theft and the cut the cable were it wasn't obvious but someone was coming out to fix.

Caravan details:

Location Cambridgeshire
Swift Accord 620 twin axle, basically a Sprite Quattro FB 2019 dealer special (yes, less than a year old)

Distinctive things:
Browny decals and it also has a silver 25th anniversary badge on each side near the front
It had an air con unit on the roof
It had the complete E&P hydraulic levelling system with big foot style stabilising feet
The awning was also taken which was a Bradcot MODUL-AIR V2 FULL AWNING in black and grey.

Yes, it was really nice.

So this experience has taught us some lessons we perhaps ought to have known before:

As the forensics guy said "if they want it they're going to take it, no matter what security you have in place".

The next storage compound we use won't be the closest one to where we live. It will have trees/hedges on the outside of the perimeter fence, having to use a noisy chainsaw is going to put them off. Also 24 hour manned CCTV with good coverage of the compound.

Please be gental with any pearls of wisdom, my pearl collection it's currently full.

ReverendJT

 

[Parksy]

I'm so sorry to see that your caravan has been stolen.
Until sentencing for caravan theft is strong enough to deter those who steal caravans I'm sorry to say that no matter how much we spend on security devices, nothing will stop this from happening.
All that I can say is that I hope that your insurance will cover the material costs, but nothing will cover your sense of loss when this happens.

 

[Beachball]

i am also very sorry hear about your stolen caravan i hope you had it well insured for everything someone else said if they want it nothing will deter them i will keep my eyes open if it come my way .

 

[Raywood]

Sorry to her of the loss. Sounds a very professional job by people who wanted that particular caravan. At that level there is very little you can do to prevent a theft, although the precautions mentioned would put off most thieves.
Tend to agree the punishment if caught is not enough to deter thieves or protect us from them.

 

[Marsh Harrier]

Sorry to hear this....

We had our caravan stollen from the drive back in May when we were still in full lockdown, we do have a suspect/s at the top of the list!

We were cased 2 days before the caravan was stollen, we know what time they stole the caravan, 4.30am in the morning, as a neighbours doorbell camera catches the bottom of my drive just. And at this time you can see a lot of activity by my drive, but not clear enough to identify anybody, But what's very odd as prior to this the only vehicle that past their house was a very small car at 1am! This is the only road in, but the junction is a Tesco Express which their cctv covers this junction part of the car park, but sadly doesn't reach my house. So we can only assume that they arrived and left doing some off roading to avoid these! As my caravan isn't seen leaving via this junction. (well the police I assume did look at the cctv, the police did ask us to ask Tesco's to check, but they won't release any footage unless the Police directly asks them to view it)

The other oddity, is even though our 2 dogs are very reactive when anybody gets near my house, they never made a sound. Found out why, they had been doped to keep them quiet! This bit is what I do find the most upsetting, the total disregard for my dogs welfare...

We've never seen hide or hair of the caravan, even though by 8am in the morning, I'd put it on various local facebook groups, and it had been well shared...

Thankfully we were insured, not the easiest of processes to go through, but very surprised that they paid us what we had paid for the caravan and awing, we did lose some money on the contents which they wouldn't pay more than £100 for a individual item.

We've started again, the caravan has been replaced and will be ready to pick up on the 16th... But one lesson learnt, if we buy something for the caravan, keep the receipt how ever small it is.. from the spud peeler upwards!

I hope that the police find it..

But I will hold up my hands, in my case if our suspicion are correct to who stole it, then I really didn't want it back...

 

[Tuningdrew]

Sorry for your loss, hopefully your insurance and insurers are up to the mark. Sounds obvious but are there any Nomadic Parasites currently camped up in the area? As we all know these fine upstanding citizens are above the law and they’re usually well tooled up for the job. A decent TA like yours makes a good living van.
If so, and if it were mine, I really wouldn’t want it back either.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Sorry to read of your loss.

 

[ReverendJT]

Thanks everybody.

Really sorry to hear about yours Marsh Harrier. That's really terrible that they doped the dogs, but not surprising. Have people been more busy pilfering than normal during the lockdown?

This is settled nomad country. I don't like to cast nasturtiums though, it could have been anyone.

I'm insured new for, in this case, new. However, and something we feel foolish for not having done, not the awning. We bought it just after the 'van and forgot to add it to the insurance. Feel free to learn from our mistake! In our case that's £1600 gone, t'was an amazing awning. Or at least less annoying to put up than most!

 

[Allegra_02]

Sorry for your loss.
As French didn't imagine that a caravan can be stolen with such tools and determination.
Daily caravan are stolen in France, often by people of communities , to be sell in Hungary or Romania
What can I do for you...
Share this information on "la caravane. com" also to look for yours than be aware, nothing stopping them.

 

[ReverendJT]

I thought I would give a little more information on my stolen caravan, a bit might be useful to you in certain circumstances but it's mostly just interesting.

I thought I better to wait a little while before posting this information just in case the police could do something about it.

People involved in the theft emailed the dealer a couple of months after the theft, but before the payout. I think they thought the caravan was manufactured by them, it was a dealer special. They wanted information on how to use various systems on the caravan, specifically heating and hydraulics. They claimed they had just purchased the caravan however the dealer knew ours has been stolen and had only sold two of that exact model during that year.

They sent pictures of the caravan and of the control panel. The first foolish thing they had done was to use their own email address, which was from a Russian email provider. I then looked up the most popular Russian social media sites and found that person's posts, they hadn't used it in a few years though.

The second bit of stupidity was in the photo of the control panel you could see the reflection of the guy's face. Although not 100% clear you could see that it matched the photos on social media. My wife's an artist and confirmed that all the characteristics of the face, eye distance, ear position and size etc definitely matched.

The third no no for the thieves was that they had left GPS tagging on on their phone. Great news! Nope, not really because it was in Russia, not too far from St. Petersburg. UK-Russian relations aren't exactly great right now.

So that was the end of that. We had our insurance money during September 2020, so only a few months after the caravan was stolen. I have to say that the Caravan and Motorhome Club, who we were insured through just asked us for one form, a map of the location, any relevant pictures and a list of receipts and didn't quibble. So I would unsure with them again. The police however were extremely slow, I truly believe they could have stopped it leaving the country if only they didn't take a couple of weeks to come back to us asking for all the information in the first place.

Anyway hopefully we'll be out next weekend hunting for a caravan, after delaying for a year. We'll store the new one elsewhere with much better security and purchase an intermittent tracker that's going to be a lot harder for thieves to find and disable.

 

[Jcloughie]

Thanks for keeping us up to date Rev. Glad you had good service on the insurance, I was also very pleased with them when I had a major claim. I hope you do not have to wait too long to get a suitable replacement.

John

 

[Raywood]

Thanks for the update. Hope all goes well with the new model when you get it. Possibly the simplest form of security is to remove all the soft furnishings when not in use and leave the curtains open so potential thieves can see this. The caravan is useless with out these.

 

[bertieboy1]

Hello,

Please could you keep an eye out for it. I doubt it will be seen again but don't want the thieves to get away with it if possible.

The reason u won't be joining you on the road this summer is because my caravan was stolen only a couple of weeks ago from a 'secure' compound. The thieves oxy acetylened off my two Alko wheel locks and my Alko Premium hitchlock. They also disabled my tracker, standard Swift, and dragged it out across fields through a gap in the rear fence (thick stroll bars) where they had also cut. It was the only caravan stolen however others were broken into. They also disabled the closest CCTV camera just a day prior to the theft and the cut the cable were it wasn't obvious but someone was coming out to fix.

Caravan details:

Location Cambridgeshire
Swift Accord 620 twin axle, basically a Sprite Quattro FB 2019 dealer special (yes, less than a year old)

Distinctive things:
Browny decals and it also has a silver 25th anniversary badge on each side near the front
It had an air con unit on the roof
It had the complete E&P hydraulic levelling system with big foot style stabilising feet
The awning was also taken which was a Bradcot MODUL-AIR V2 FULL AWNING in black and grey.

Yes, it was really nice.

So this experience has taught us some lessons we perhaps ought to have known before:

As the forensics guy said "if they want it they're going to take it, no matter what security you have in place".

The next storage compound we use won't be the closest one to where we live. It will have trees/hedges on the outside of the perimeter fence, having to use a noisy chainsaw is going to put them off. Also 24 hour manned CCTV with good coverage of the compound.

Please be gental with any pearls of wisdom, my pearl collection it's currently full.

ReverendJT

If a security device is devised by a human then it can be defeated by a human,if our van was stolen I wouldn't want it back

 

[Beachball]

I thought I would give a little more information on my stolen caravan, a bit might be useful to you in certain circumstances but it's mostly just interesting.

I thought I better to wait a little while before posting this information just in case the police could do something about it.

People involved in the theft emailed the dealer a couple of months after the theft, but before the payout. I think they thought the caravan was manufactured by them, it was a dealer special. They wanted information on how to use various systems on the caravan, specifically heating and hydraulics. They claimed they had just purchased the caravan however the dealer knew ours has been stolen and had only sold two of that exact model during that year.

They sent pictures of the caravan and of the control panel. The first foolish thing they had done was to use their own email address, which was from a Russian email provider. I then looked up the most popular Russian social media sites and found that person's posts, they hadn't used it in a few years though.

The second bit of stupidity was in the photo of the control panel you could see the reflection of the guy's face. Although not 100% clear you could see that it matched the photos on social media. My wife's an artist and confirmed that all the characteristics of the face, eye distance, ear position and size etc definitely matched.

The third no no for the thieves was that they had left GPS tagging on on their phone. Great news! Nope, not really because it was in Russia, not too far from St. Petersburg. UK-Russian relations aren't exactly great right now.

So that was the end of that. We had our insurance money during September 2020, so only a few months after the caravan was stolen. I have to say that the Caravan and Motorhome Club, who we were insured through just asked us for one form, a map of the location, any relevant pictures and a list of receipts and didn't quibble. So I would unsure with them again. The police however were extremely slow, I truly believe they could have stopped it leaving the country if only they didn't take a couple of weeks to come back to us asking for all the information in the first place.

Anyway hopefully we'll be out next weekend hunting for a caravan, after delaying for a year. We'll store the new one elsewhere with much better security and purchase an intermittent tracker that's going to be a lot harder for thieves to find and disable.

Hi Rev Thanks for the update and good luck searching for your next caravan and i hope you are successful