ipatz

Hi everyone,

I'm about to become a first time owner of a G Wagen AMG and I’m looking forward to joining this community. With the car arriving in a couple of weeks, I'm particularly interested in tips and best practices for anti-theft measures. Beyond the basics of not leaving the keys in the car and ensuring it's parked in a garage overnight, are there any additional precautions or security enhancements you'd recommend to safeguard my new vehicle?

Your insights, based on experience or knowledge, would be immensely valuable to me as a first-time owner. I'm here to learn from the best and ensure my G Wagen remains safe and sound under my care.

Thank you

SLS

Install the mercedes.me App on your phone. It will keep tabs on your G63. Like find my iPhone.

Also, I ordered a fitcamex front and rear cameras and are in the process of installing it. If you only need front camera accident recording, then it just plugs in to the windshield wiper rain sensor electrical plug. So easy peasy. I'm installing it with a battery and rear camera, so requires more wiring. This will allow monitoring when the vehicle is off, like if someone dings me.

LLee

Evidently, mine came with an apple car tag installed under the front passenger seat. As soon as we purchased and arrived home our iphones alerted us that it was there so I used the app to “play sound” when near it and it’s under the front passenger seat. I’ve went back to dealership to have them remove it and they can’t find it. They said it was probably placed on by former owner. With that being said, I haven’t driven it other than that because I’m super freaked out. Because i’m unaware as to who exactly it is, i’m assuming it could be anyone, even someone at dealer because when I arrived at dealer it was shut off and wouldn’t ding.

superswiss

The previous owner probably just forgot to remove it and eventually removed it from their phone. As far as I know you can see the phone number of the owner when your iPhone alerts you and you can even disable it. Personally I would not recommend putting AirTags etc. in vehicles, because the latest trend among thieves is now to use Bluetooth detectors to find hidden electronic devices in cars. So if they pick up the signal from an AirTag coming from your vehicle, they will think that you are hiding a laptop or something and will break in to try to find it.

For OP, what kind of theft protection are you looking for? GPS tracking if the car gets stolen, or protection against theft of contents in your car? Unfortunately, the reality is that trucks and SUVs are prime targets for car break ins, because you can't really hide anything. The thieves can look through the window and if they see the cargo cover is in place, they'll immediately suspect that your hiding something. Around here some people have gone as far as leaving their hatch wide open so thieves can see that they have nothing in the trunk. So best advise is to remove the cargo cover so thieves can see your empty trunk and move on.

LLee

Thanks for the insight! The only thing is, in order to get the info for owner and disable the airtag you have to find it then hover your phone over top of it. We can’t locate it but it dings letting us know it’s there. I have no idea what to do. I asked dealer if they could locate previous owner but they gave some reason as to why they couldn’t. previous owner hasn’t disabled it because it let me know it’s still tracking the only two times i’ve driven my truck. I’m honestly weirded out and afraid to. I’ll take it to another mercedes dealer that same as the one I purchase car from but different locale and see if they’ll have someone at their service center take a look. There are so many wires underneath seat i’d rather they mess something up instead of my husband or myself. I’m super freaked now about the thief scanning aspect to it. What anti theft tracking device do you recommend for vehicles.

superswiss

I see. Yeah that is disconcerting. Have you tried putting your phone on the seat to see if it might be close enough to disable it? I know despite the beeping, they are kinda hard to track down. My wife had misplaced her car key which has a tag on it once, and we tracked it down to her backpack, but were still digging like mad until we found it in there. It might be under the carpet or taped to the bottom of the seat.

I just use what MB offers out of the box with Mercedes me connect. If the car is stolen, they work with law enforcement to track it as part of the stolen vehicle service they offer. I can also track it myself in the app and can set up geofences to get alerts when the car moves out of a fenced area. I have geofences set up around locations that I frequent, including my dealership so I get alerted if the car is taken off premise. Similar to the geofencing is valet protect that let's me quickly set up a radius around the parked location of the car and get alerted if it leaves the area. Don't really use this, though, as I don't valet park my cars ever and generally park in secure parking structures.

LLee

In happy to report that the airtag has been found and removed. I went to get my car registered and right down the street from tag place is a mercedes service center. They just sell sprinters and service mercedes. So I just randomly stopped in and told them my issue. There were determined to find it and they did. It was found tucked inside the passenger seat’s side leather panel. I was so relieved that I jumped and hugged the guy and gave him money for a nice lunch. The dealership where I purchased from looked at me like I was crazy when I went back there because for some reason it wouldn’t ping it so I could locate when I took air back for them to find. However, it dinged at the service center. This makes me feel like someone at dealer placed it on and disabled when they saw me come back. Hhhmmmm, it was just super odd that wa the only place I couldn’t ping it to search for it.

Can anyone be give me some insight on whatever it is being discussed about a protectant over the windshield to help alleviate damage from rocks to the actual windshield.

superswiss

Glad you found it. I'm assuming you now have the AirTag owner's information, so you can report them.

LLee

When you find airtag you’re supposed to be able to hover you iphone over it and get the serial number of airtag and last four digits of owner it’s registered to. However it wouldn’t work. Otherwise, you have to have file report with law enforcement and they subpoena apple to give owner info.