This letter is sooo old but I still think about this incident all the time. If I can pass this along to anyone and it helps them that would be great! NO one deserves to have their stuff stolen and their privacy invaded! Mike wrote this right after it happened about 3 years ago! We also lost all of our picture, videos, etc because everything was on our computer and extrenal hard drive which was taken. If anything, I always said I wanted just our hard drive back and a couple pieces of non valuable jewelry ( stuff I had since I was girl that had no value to them but TONS to me) and they could have kept everything else! Now when we go out of town anything that is important and that is staying is moved to the security box we have. Also, we make sure someone is checking on our house while we are gone. I read that having a security alarm decreases the chance of your house being robbed by 90% ! Having an alarm can protect you also if you are home and something like this were to happen. We live in an imperfect world where there is alot of people who chose wrong instead of right. Unfortunately, we have to protect ourselves and children from these people! Again I cant stress how important this is to us.....
Dear Friends & Family,
As, some of you might know, we were robbed while we were on vacation. They came in and took everything. They knocked down the brick wall in our back yard and took everything through a green belt behind our house. They got the big screen TV, computer, jewelry, cash, checkbooks, credit cards, and much more. They even cashed multiple checks in Rachel’s name. They also destroyed everything that they didn’t take. We just wanted to send this email out, so nobody else goes through what we have been through. These are just some suggestions we have to help you out.
1. Get an alarm. (We found a good company with free equipment and cheap monitoring, if you need one.)
2. Get motion sensor lights around your house.
3. Call the credit bureaus and put fraud protection on your social security numbers. It’s free. Call Equifax @ 1800-685-1111 & they will forward your info to the other two bureaus. All new credit request with your social will have to be confirmed by you.
4. Write down the serial numbers and keep manuals for all your electronics. The police need serial numbers to report things stolen and manuals help with the insurance process.
5. Keep the receipts for all your valuables. Take pictures of anything special.
6. Use a password to protect your computer. You can add a password under your user account settings.
7. Back up all your files on the computer. You can back them up on disk or use an online storage website. We lost all of our digital pictures & music stored on our computer.
8. Keep anything important in a safe spot such as a safety deposit box. A safe is not a good place because they can steal that too. (My insurance agent just had a claim where a large gun safe was stolen through the side of a house.)
9. Get separate insurance on any jewelry worth over $1000. Most insurance policies only insure each single item up to $1000 and up to a total of $2500 for all jewelry.
10. Find the number for the Suspicious Activity Line in your city, and use it. It’s anonymous. Make sure all you neighbors know it also.
11. BACK UP YOUR PHOTOS AND VIDEOS... external hard drive is not enough! use an internet site and save to CD's that our placed in your security box at the bank.
Hope this helps you out a little. Don’t think this won’t happen to you. We thought it wouldn’t, and it did happen. It is not fun. We found all this stuff out the hard way. Please learn from our mistakes.
Sincerely,
Mike & Rachel
No comments:
Post a Comment