Aftermarket trackers key to stolen car recovery as factory tech fails
Not all trackers are equal
Launchbury also cautioned against relying on Bluetooth tags such as Apple’s AirTag or Samsung’s SmartTag to recover a stolen vehicle. Unlike dedicated stolen-vehicle recovery systems, he said, such devices were designed to help people find lost or mislaid property, not recover stolen cars.
“You’re going to be telling the criminals where it’s located shortly into the journey,” he said. “It’s going to go ‘beep, beep, beep’ and they’re going to locate it and throw it away.”
Instead, Launchbury said drivers shopping for a dedicated stolen-vehicle recovery system should look for one that is certified to Thatcham’s S5 or S7 standards, or the latest S5-2E products that include an immobilisation feature.
However, Launchbury believes that even the best tracking system will only work if drivers ensure that the monitoring service is kept active. He said many car owners assume the tracker will continue to work after the initial subscription expires.
He said trackers are frequently purchased out of necessity rather than desire, with owners having them installed to either protect high-value models or to meet their insurance requirements. The problem, he said, comes later down the line, when the subscription expires.
“Often people own a car for three to five years and then just dismiss the email. At that point, if the vehicle is stolen, often these tracking systems will not be able to be woken up.”
So what happens if the monitoring subscription has lapsed? Tracker said vehicles without an active monitoring subscription “do not form part of the business recovery statistics”. However, it added: “In many cases, it is technically possible to reactivate a Tracker UK device, depending on the type of unit installed.”
Every case is reviewed individually, though, and if a subscription has expired, it is “not automatically reactivated following a theft”.
Thomas said he has “never experienced this” when asked whether an expired subscription has prevented the recovery of a stolen vehicle reported to Inn-Track. He explained that Inn-Track’s battery-powered devices are no longer monitored once a contract has expired, because “under data protection rules, tracking companies should not be monitoring the movements of the cars, especially if the car has been sold to a new owner”. He added. “Most of our customers renew or when they change their cars have a new device.”
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