Too many South Africans are still falling victim to theft because of remote control jamming. Thieves use a standard 400MHz gate or garage remote control to jam the signal sent by a car remote control, effectively preventing your door locks from engaging. Thieves then have ample opportunity to open the unlocked doors, open the boot from the inside and steal items of their choosing.
Car jamming criminals specifically target schools and shopping malls. It seems that parents often leave their valuables in the car when they’re walking their children to class, which of course provides the perfect opportunity for car jamming thieves to break in.
This is bad news for insurance clients and insurers alike. Firstly - because there will be no signs of visible and forced entry to the vehicle, an insurance company will have reasonable grounds to repudiate a claim. At the same time, insurance companies are left vulnerable to an increase in potentially fraudulent claims by consumers, especially because the lack of forced entry makes it even harder to prove that car jamming is to blame for the loss of valuables stolen from a vehicle.
As such, it’s more important than ever to read your policy wording to make sure that you know under which circumstances you won’t enjoy cover, and to do your bit in preventing crimes like these from happening.
Items that are stolen from your vehicle are usually the type of articles you carry around with you (i.e. laptops, cameras, GPS devices, etc) and will be specified under the All-Risk Insurance(OUT-and-About) section of your policy.
OUTsurance’s OUT-and-About wording states that “we will not cover loss or damage caused by theft from a vehicle, unless any loose items are concealed in the boot or cubbyhole of the vehicle, and there are visible signs of forced entry”.
As such, we would like to ask clients to please make sure that their valuables are locked away in the boot of their car. Secondly, we would like to urge clients to always double check that the doors of their car are locked, before they walk away from the vehicle.