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PSA: Take Photos of your Van
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Public Service Announcement

I wanted to reach out to the community and have everyone take an hour or so to do one very important thing. Take photos of your Vanagon/Bus. I'm NOT talking about photos of your Van in front of a cool waterfall, with your kids playing in it, or at an awesome campsite like what's typical on Instagram. I mean plain, generic photos of your van all by itself. Nothing else.

I run the app VanAlert and we help people recover their stolen Vanagons/Buses. I can't count the number of times someone has reported their van/bus stolen but only had photos of the way the van USED TO LOOK and not how the van looked when it was stolen. I've gotten photos of a van and notes that read "Here's photos of my van but it looks different than what's pictured. It now has RMW bumpers, a Swing Arm, Gowesty 16" wheels, a Thule roof top box, an ARB awning and tinted windows." So in other words, the van looks totally different than the photos we're attaching to the Stolen Van Alert notification. Not good. Not good at all.

So my suggestion is... take current, detailed photos of your van. Just in case. These photos will come in handy if your van is ever stolen and/or if you need to file a claim with your insurance company for an accident or something similar.

I took a few hours to get my van all cleaned up, drove it down to an area cul-de-sac so I could easily take photos around my van without having any distractions or obstacles in the photos. If you don't have an area free of obstacles in your neighborhood, you could easily drive down to an empty business park or warehouse in order to find some nice wide open areas.

Taking good clear photos of your van is a great help to us on VanAlert in case your van is ever stolen. I'd suggest taking a photo at every corner and of every side of the van. If you have a Westfalia, you can do this with the top down, then again with the top up. Those images will greatly help us locate your vehicle. I'd also suggest taking photos of the engine bay, interior front and rear, suspension at every corner in order to document your vehicle for insurance purposes. In case the van is not recovered, you have a complete set of photos in order to hand over to the insurance company and/or a third party arbitrator in order to get the correct value established.

I keep a specific folder on my phone that includes all of these photos that I have taken of my van. They're easy to get to and they're always on me. You can opt for this method and/or store them online in a cloud service so that you can easily retrieve them if necessary. Having them readily available is a major plus if the day ever comes where you need to report your van stolen. Having them on your phone or in the cloud is much better than having them buried away on a hard drive someplace at home.

If you'd like to join our VanAlert app in order to help take part in helping locate stolen Vanagons/Buses please download our app from the Apple App or Google Play stores. We've helped recover over 80% of vehicles stolen that have been reported to us.

Stay safe out there!

-Abel

VanAlert.com

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Love this app and THANK YOU! Will do!

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1 year ago