LORELY'S LIFE, SOLIHULL OBSERVER

Published on Thu 13th Jul 2006

For someone as useless at direction-finding as me, the satellite navigation system or sat nav has revolutionised my life. Some now come as a part of new cars, or like mine, they sit in a little box on your windscreen in a cradle attached by a sucker.

Type in your destination and it'll take you there with a map on the screen and a seductive voice giving you verbal instructions. They never lose their temper with you, or even sound exasperated when you fail to follow instructions (unlike some people in my own family I could mention!)

Last week a personal long crime victim-free spell was broken my car was broken into and the satellite navigation box was stolen from the glove compartment.

It was an opportunist theft, but the clue was left for the thieves because I had not removed the cradle from the front windscreen. The thieves had banked on my not having taken the sat nav with me, and that it would be in the glove compartment. Having smashed the passenger window they then helped themselves to the sat nav box and its cradle.

I felt pretty calm about it at the time: I was, after all, fully comprehensively insured. On phoning the insurance company, however, I found that with only a £100 no claims bonus for personal possessions in the car, it was cheaper not to claim than lose my precious no claims bonus.

Ah well, you live and learn. But I hope that at least YOU can learn from my mistakes.

The police have asked me to pass a message on through this column. Apparently sat navs are very fashionable to steal at the moment, and thieves can tell if there's one hiding in the glove compartment from as little as the tell-tale ring the cradle sucker leaves on the window.

So if you own one of these handy little devices, remove the whole thing from your windscreen and clean off any tell-take rings the sucker leaves on your windscreen every time you leave the car. Otherwise you could have the cost not only of replacing the sat nav but the trouble and expense of replacing the window.