How To Track And Find Your Stolen Car

My phone beeped the other day and I had an email alert with the heading “how to track and find your stolen car”. It was an alert from Google that I subscribed for. I clicked on the article to read the tips from the writer. The first tip was to look up the car VIN. A VIN is a vehicle identification number that allows you to know the history of the car. But in reality, this service wouldn’t let you find your stolen car. Rather, it would help a prospective buyer to know if the car s\he is about to buy is stolen. So unless the buyer can somehow contact you after the VIN lookup, this won’t help you to locate your vehicle.

The article goes on to tell you to check whether the tyres have expired. Apparently, expired tyres indicate that the car is stolen. This gave me a chuckle, because this person has clearly never driven in Lagos. In Naija most cars have expired tyres! I can bet some of you reading this article never knew that tyres can expire.

It goes on to tell you to file a police report and the police can help you find your car. This is actually a good advice. I have a friend that once had his car stolen at gun point. He reported it to police and the police found the car. However, he had to settle the DPO #50,000.00 to get his car back.

The next advise was to tell your friends and family about the theft. Not a bad idea, but few people would actually be on the look out for it. But again, not a bad advice.

Then the article suggested that you visit car dealers around you to see if the thief sold it to them. But most reputable dealers would do their due diligence before buying a car. This is to avoid the wahala that comes with buying stolen vehicles. Also if someone steals your car, a lot of times, they break it into parts and sell them or they move them out of state or the country. Good luck finding your car.

Finally, It went on to suggest you get a car tracker. This in itself is not a bad idea, but car insurance is much better. You can read more on why car insurance is better than a car tracker.

If you have a car that is valuable to you, instead of thinking about how to track and find your stolen car, go and put comprehensive insurance on the vehicle. Here is an article on how car insurance saved this guy when he was robbed at gun point. It should help you understand why car insurance is your best bet.

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