Stolen GPS Nuvi 250w serial 15B087465

Sorry to hear that Ladybug....makes you wish in addition to Lock Protected it had a remote Taser mode. Hmmmm.....back to the drawing board, where's those coils and capacitors...!

I understand your situation and can commiserate with you as I also have had a unit stolen. Even though your unit was locked, don't expect it to ever be returned.

Because it was locked, it probably will end up in a trash receptacle and not in a pawn shop or on one of the flea market tables/lists.

you might want to report it to garmin, sooner or later whom ever buys it from the thief or maybe the thief will access garmin with it an they could trace it back to the thief.

But I also inserted a spash screen similar to this one http://www.mynuvi.it/auto_splash/splash_lock_new_w_EN.html
and wrote $$$ REWARD IF FOUND $$$

If they don't have the patience to unlock it, won't get anything selling it and desperately need the money.....

I'm sure you've learned your lesson from this but in the future you need to ALWAYS lock your car. It doesn't matter where you are. Even if you park in front of a police station you need to lock your car.

I'm sure you've learned your lesson from this but in the future you need to NEVER lock your car. The thief will just smash a window, adding even more expense. It doesn't matter where you are. Even if you park in front of a police station you need to leave you car unlocked to protect you windows. Or even better, wind them down so they are safely stored inside the door. The real lesson is to not leave the GPS in the car.

Sorry to hear somebody took your Garmin.
But i like the splash screen idea. Not sure about the name and number thing. Because they could look it up and go to your house to unlock it, if thats your set location and then maybe do a little more stealing from your house this time!!!!!

My splash screen gives my name and real contact info. If an honest person gets the GPS I might get it back. I know that if I found someone's GPS I would try to return it. But if the splash screen started lying to me, or if the programed in "home" location were a cornfield or a police station, I would stop wasting my time trying to help.

They can't use my name on the splash screen to find my home to unlock the phone, because it is not locked. Locking is pointless and only increases the chance that the phone will be smashed before it can be recovered. In this case they say they think they know who took it so it might be recovered, but it well might be recovered in smashed condition.

I have returned several cell phones by having the phone call "home" and talking with the owner. If I ever reached a police station or dial-a-prayer I would have stopped trying.

In this case ladybug clearly considered that the GPS was likely to be stolen from the car, otherwise she would not have turned on Garmin lock and fumbled with it every time she powered up the GPS. So Garmin lock did just what it was intended to do, lull the user into leaving the GPS in the car and provide a smug sense of "the thief is inconvenienced too" when the GPS is finally taken. If you want to increase that sense of smugness, set you splash screen to say "You are about to see a PIN screen. The pin can be determined by adding the two numbers etched on both side car windows. If you smashed a window to steal this GPS then you can not determine the PIN". Then you can leave it in the car and look forward to added smugness when your window is smashed.

Of course, this is just a suggestion, I don't do it. I put my real name and actual contact info on the splash screen so that just maybe if the GPS somehow gets away it might come home. And I never leave it in the car. I tried Garmin lock when I first got the device, quickly decided it was not worth the hassle.

Sorry about your loss.
We always try to put in the trunk when not being used. Here it is locked even if we forget to lock the car.
Hope you recover it.
guy

A good rule of thumb is to hide (place in glove box, trunk, under newspaper, etc.) any valuables left in the car. It's much less likely that someone would break in a car if, looking through the window, they don't see anything worth stealing.

And unattended autos should be locked.

According to the original post the GPS was "hidden" in the glove compartment. Far better to take it with you, although then you get deprived of the smug satisfaction that one gets from having a "locked" Garmin nuvi stolen.

I would neither be smug, nor satisfied upon losing my nuvi. Locked or not.

You can put your first name only, a hotmail address and either your work or cell number

I have lived in and near New York City all my life. I have parked cars on the streets for decades and never had one broken into. My GPS is always in the glove compartment and has never been stolen.

However, I have been robbed at knife point once, robbed at gun point once and my wallet was stolen once. In each case I would have had a GPS stolen when it was in the safest place possible, my pocket.

It is all about luck. Don't change anything you do about storing your GPS. Just forget about it and move on.