Hi,

I was just wondering if anyone has any thoughts about this, or perhaps I'm
barking up the wrong tree?

A couple of weeks ago I was car-jacked and my beloved M3 is now gone.

A couple of 'coincidences' occurred before this happened, and I was curious
as to whether I'm paranoid or not.

About 6 weeks ago I had a soft-top failure. Rather than take the car back to
the original dealership (75 miles away), I was reluctantly persuaded by them
to take it to my local dealer in Stanmore, Middx (Scotthall), as it was
thought to be very minor.

It seemed that the fault was deep within the electrical system and they took
about 4 days to fix it.

After 2 days, the tracker company phoned me twice to tell me that there had
been an activation. I told them it was OK as it was in the workshop. It was
nice to know that it worked though.

The dealer also phoned me on the 3rd morning to tell me that they had 'lost
my key'.
I gave them the spare, and they organised a replacement key which was given
to me when the car was eventually returned.

The new key was not re-programmed to lock my doors once I pulled away.

2 weeks later I was car-jacked. The thief's were extremely professional, and
seemed to be aware that my door would be unlocked. They had no weapons to
threaten me with, but just pulled the doors open and bundled me out. (It was
obvious that this wasn't their 1st time).

They immediately drove off in my car and also the car they had been using (a
Golf gti, also stolen that day).

I immediately called tracker and the police. The police helicopter was up
within 7 or 8 minutes and was doing a tracker scan for my car (20 mile
radius from the air). All local police units had been informed and were
standing by on all major routes with tracker equipment (5 mile  ground
radius).

The car was not detected by any unit. 2 weeks later, there is still no sign.

I asked tracker last week why there was no result, and they said that with
the police response at the time, they were very surprised it was not
recovered, They felt that the unit was probably faulty.

Whilst accepting that the car is probably not in the UK any longer, I cannot
help but wonder if an individual at the dealership set me up by disabling
the security locks, and then disabling the tracker system whilst the car was
being worked upon.

I'd love to know if anyone has heard of a similar incident, and if anyone
has any wisdom to share with me on this.

BTW thanks to all of you that responded to my previous post, and to let you
know that I took your unanimous advice and ordered a 911S Cabriolet for
October build. (IOW, I get to enjoy the wife's Ford Focus for another 3-4
months.......sob)

TIA

Harry