"Dave West" wrote in message
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"larkim" wrote in message
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On Friday, 15 February 2013 15:13:26 UTC, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:08:11 +0000, Toby Sleigh wrote:

Snipped

IME any discount gained by having a burglar alarm is minimal. Best say

you haven't got one. Especially since if you have got one, but had a

break in when it was off (e.g. you were at home) they may not pay up.

Much as I'd hate to imagine either arriving home with the possessions
gone, or waking up in the night with an intruder around, I still consider
it sufficiently unlikely to occur that its not worth spending £500-£1000
on (in addition to insurance!!)
Matt
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So in 2013 with the supposedly new attitude by the authorities to
burglars, what is the best course of action on hearing someone breaking in
to your house downstairs ?

Depends on who you are. If you're some elderly wimp or woman,
best to just lock the door of the room you are in and call the cops
and tell them that some is burgling your house right now.

Also depends on how likely it is for the cops to show up soon.

I know they show up very quickly here, because I have called
them a number of times and have had them show up quickly.

Also depends on whether you are insured or not too.

It can be worth making it clear that you know they are there,
most of the crims will **** off when they realise that the people
in the house know they are there.

Not all do tho, most obviously those who choose to
**** over the occupants to get the PIN of the cards etc.

There basically is no nice tidy thing to do that best in all situations.

I personally do want to maximise the chance of getting the arsehole caught.

But don’t go to the expense of doing the house so its easy to
make sure they cant get out again once you have detected they
are inside the house. Basically because I have 13 ****ing great
patio doors and only conventional windows in the bathrooms,
toilets and kitchens and only full electrically activated bars
would do that and that isnt worth the very substantial cost.

It wouldn’t cost much more to have another one to the bedroom
so I could just stay there and let the cops deal with it even if they
do take a while to show up because they have had a rash of them
etc.

When I check why the neighbour's alarm has gone off I am a bit
careful about checking if there are any crims in the yard, but one
side of their house is very close to the fence and I do go right
around the house to check if someone has tried to get in thru
one of the windows and there wouldn’t be any way to get
away from a group of them up there if they were there.

The risk is trivial, so I risk it anyway, even tho
the home owner isnt too keen in the risk.