If You're Broken In To: Before & After

[dodger]

A quick primer on documentation and target hardening.

Fist, we all have a good deal invested into our systems - 2 channel, HT, Computer, etc..

If you have an $80,000.00 dollar house, even with replacement cost, the average Comapany will insure your contents at one half of the home value - $40,000.00.

Total up the cost (replacement if you have it) of your Components, additional "tweak" equipment. Then add cables, tubes, LPs, CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, Television(s), collecible mugs, cleaning chemicals - ANYTHING audio or video related.

Then add the rest of the contents of your home going from knick-kncaks to towels, to furnure to apllicances. Don't forget clothing, jewelry, tools - every item in your house or apartment. Exceed $40,000.00? Plus you must have your house insured for at least Eighty percent of its value or they start deducting.

To start, gather all manuals together. Staple or paper clip sales receipts to them.. For a lot of equipment go to Audio Classics and see if they have a listing. If so, print and save, do the same with eBay the best quality.

Go through each room and take still photographs of each wall. Then using a cam corder, go back and do a slow sweep of the room, stopping at each valuable item and speak the serial number. Note Vintage or new.

Rent a safe deposit box. Store the information fro Audio Classics and other sites that give a positive price in that box along with tax returns, it then becomes deductible if you can itemize.

Do not add your Social Security Number to units for easier return. In 99 percent of the cases the SS Administration will not give an Agency a name. The Agency contacts the SS, they contact the person requesting permission to give the information, then they send it to the requesting Agency. By then usually enough time has elapsed for the items to be auctioned.

Use your Driver's license number or if you can find out the N.C.I.C. (National Crime Information Clearing House) of your Agencey, use that plus a 5 digit code after. Have a stamp made up. Use Manufacturer's Ink and stam the items in two places - one obvious, the other a hidden. but be consistent with placement.

If things are stolen, an NCIC number is a give away as to where the item came from.

But I have seen $50,000.00 houses with $65,000.00 worth of stereo related gear. If the house burned, there would be a lot that would come out of the owner's pocket.

I'll do a section at a time if people desire. Most come from Articles or books that I have authored and have had published under copyright. For the value, time and labor people have put into their systems, the copyright to me does not equal.

One last, some insurance companies that ofer the replacement cost option, will purchase a similar item and deduct it form your benefit. Who wants a stranger picking out their equipment? I don't.

But you can raise the interior content value at not a high cost.

DISCLAIMER: I do not, nor any family work for any Insurance Company, nor is any benefit derived from this Post.

[dodger]

For those thar feel they are in safe neighborhoods, have heard low crime rate compared to City, Check Population density.

Also it can take a thief approximately 2 - 3 minutes to break in. From there if you have a minitored system there's a good chance the minitor station is not in your town. They will make an 11 (incliding i) digit phone to your residence to make sure it's not accidental.

Then then have to make an 11 digit phone call to your Emergency Services. In phone calls that can eat about 3 minutes.

If they bring wire cutters, as a good number do - cables are not high on the want list - Unplug unit(s), cut interconnects or speaker cables and exit.

No matter where you live, it can happen.

[dodger]

Lunch Bump

[SilverSport]

...and in the nice neighborhoods, the hoodrats know where the "good stuff" is...in YOUR neigborhood...where you leave your doors unlocked, your car unlocked at night with your cell phone and laptop and sometimes your radar detector on...

Be Safe,

Bill