Recovery Agent’s Tricks of the Trade
It is actually very very easy for a repo man to get a hold of your vehicle and drive off with it. After all, chances are that he has done it thousands of times and has consequently gotten very good at it. Generally speaking, it will take him less than half a minute to back up into your driveway, hook up the car to his vehicle and drive off with it.
If you can get a hold of him before he is off with your repo cars then you will not have the sad experience of losing your vehicle but of course it is just not possible to watch your vehicle from the house window all day long. Some recovery agents are also good at standing not right outside your home but nearby enough to be able to tell when you are in a location of your house that would allow them to get ahold of your vehicle without your running out to stop them in time. All told, it is just not realistic to expect that you will be able to count on seeing the recovery agent and running out the door in time to catch him before he hooks up your vehicle and is off with it.
If you have a garage with a locking door then you are pretty much problem free; if not, the trick is to find a way to park your vehicle outside, unprotected, in such a way that it is impossible for a recovery agent to get at it easily. A couple things you can do are either park the car in such a way that another car is right behind it and the sides are hedged in with either buildings, fence, or other cars, or park it in between cars with a building or fence on one side. That makes it a lot more time consuming or even impossible for an RA to quickly hook up your vehicle and tow it away.
One thing you should keep in mind however is that this is not totally full-proof as often RA’s do have what is known as a ‘valet’ key, which will open the car doors and turn off the factory alarm, allowing the RA easy access to your vehicle.
If you want to afford your vehicle maximum protection from an RA, then you will want to have the door lock and ignition changed so that a valet key will not be able to open the car and turn it on. That, combined with parking the vehicle in such a way that it can not be hooked up to another vehicle and towed off, is your best bet if you are trying to avoid having your vehicle taken by a recovery agent. For more great information on protecting your ride and know your rights visit the Repo Cars Guide.
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