car has been cloned!

silvercar

Phone call today from a friend asking what hubbie is doing in town XX.

As in:

Oh that is X's car in front, wonder what he is doing here on a sunday morning. that's strange, wouldn't have expected him to be round here. i'll ring wife and ask her. Frined was on the mark, because its an area about 10 miles from home, yet we've never had reason to go there.

silvercar

soup wrote: »

did the friends keep following ? If its not far then why not drive there in the evening and have a good root about the estates and see if you can see it parked up. I'd happily go on a day trip and spend 5 hrs hunting if it was my car cloned. What town was it seen in ?

By the time we'd finished the conversation, the car had turned off towards the motorway.

So either someone has bought a stolen car or its about to be used as a robbery. Is that the conclusion?

hcb42

yes...can only be those reasons, assuming your friends eyesight is all ok..

soup

Well at least you are ahead of the game and know its out there thanks to your friends. The cops now know and I expect they will/have put a marker against the reg number so if it goes through an ANPR trap then it will get pulled over. In the glovebox of your car keep the details of the date you reported it, the name of the cop you spoke to, the station, the incident log number and some ID. You/hubby may get pulled over first.

Dippypud

Get yourself some distinctive stickers, one for the front and one for the rear screen.

Just so they are enough to tell your vehicle from the 'other' one in the event of speed camera and CCTV footage.

Even a boring GB sticker in a distinctive place can be enough.

Good luck.

scheming_gypsy

Dippypud wrote: »

Get yourself some distinctive stickers, one for the front and one for the rear screen.

Just so they are enough to tell your vehicle from the 'other' one in the event of speed camera and CCTV footage.

Even a boring GB sticker in a distinctive place can be enough.

Good luck.

if you get caught on a speed camera, you won't want a sticker to prove it's yours... you'll want to try and pass it off on the clone.

rev_henry

Consider putting your private plate on retention and putting the original plate back on, just for a bit until its sorted out. That way the plate should come up on ANPR as 'no trace' and it means your car and the dodgy car have different plates.

soup

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

if you get caught on a speed camera, you won't want a sticker to prove it's yours... you'll want to try and pass it off on the clone.

The sticker would be to prove it was the cloned car without a sticker that was on film.

red_eye

soup wrote: »

did the friends keep following ? If its not far then why not drive there in the evening and have a good root about the estates and see if you can see it parked up. I'd happily go on a day trip and spend 5 hrs hunting if it was my car cloned. What town was it seen in ?

I think you will find that the clone plates will be removed shortly after packing up, that is if they had the brains which they would have if the managed to clone the plate

pitkin2020

soup wrote: »

Well at least you are ahead of the game and know its out there thanks to your friends. The cops now know and I expect they will/have put a marker against the reg number so if it goes through an ANPR trap then it will get pulled over. In the glovebox of your car keep the details of the date you reported it, the name of the cop you spoke to, the station, the incident log number and some ID. You/hubby may get pulled over first.

Dippypud wrote: »

Get yourself some distinctive stickers, one for the front and one for the rear screen.

Just so they are enough to tell your vehicle from the 'other' one in the event of speed camera and CCTV footage.

Even a boring GB sticker in a distinctive place can be enough.

Good luck.

Great advice, I will add keep a log so you can easily remember where you have been.

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

if you get caught on a speed camera, you won't want a sticker to prove it's yours... you'll want to try and pass it off on the clone.

Your unlikely to win on that basis, "Honestly guv it was the cloned car", your far better trying to distance your own car from the cloned one as much as possible, so should a hit and run, speeding, raid etc happen and its caught on CCTV there will be differences from the car in the pic to yours.