Today there are only two types of people to whom those who have already been broken into and those who haven't yet... We cannot protect our personal values and physical integrity acquired over the course of a lifetime, but we can reduce and possibly prevent the damage by preparing in time.
Prevention should serve two important purposes. On the one hand, keep the unauthorized intruder away, and on the other hand, if you do not succeed in deterring them, then adequately document what happened.
In order to achieve the first goal, it is necessary to create the impression that the risk is not worth the expected result and benefit for the intruder. This can even mean a multitude of tricks up to the point of deception. After all, if the burglar is in danger of being caught, he prefers to look for a location where the risk is lower, perhaps in proportion to the expected profit.
In many cases, protection with physical and electronic asset protection devices required by insurance companies is sufficient or a basic condition. The detection of these by an external observer is already a sufficient deterrent in many cases.
Why do I need this if I have insurance?
Many people are under the misconception that the insurance company compensates for all damage caused during a burglary. Those who have already experienced it know that the insurance always limits the compensation to an upper value limit. This means that depending on the degree of physical and electronic property protection system in the property, the damage will be reimbursed accordingly.
The bad news is that if there is an electronic asset protection system installed, but it was not used or was not working at the time of the damage event, the amount of compensation may be significantly lower. This is important, since these devices are suitable for signaling unauthorized intruders even when people are at home, yet many people do not arm the system even when they go to bed in the evening. So it has happened that, waking up to a noise in the morning, they met the burglar face to face on the ground floor...
The alarm worked, but the insurance doesn't pay...
Unfortunately, this is possible, but at least to the extent that the insurance company does not recognize the expensive electronic asset protection system as adequate. There could be several reasons for this. First of all, the insurance company accepts such a system as suitable if it was installed by a person or company who is entitled to it and has an official license.
This is only one of the conditions, because documentation for the installation of the system is required, the mandatory content of which is regulated individually by insurance companies. In all cases, the elements of the system and the installation solutions as a whole must satisfy the relevant standards. The installer's statement, which is required by law, must not be missing from the documentation. If these are missing, the insurance company will only reimburse you as if there was no alarm system.
Many times these conditions and requirements cannot be met without prior planning. While this can be easily solved in an upstairs apartment by an installer experienced in construction, in a larger family house this can be a serious planning requirement. Delays are often only realized when the damage event occurs, so we can only talk about an expensive and costly solution.
Can my stolen things be recovered?
Well, I don't think anyone can comment responsibly on that. In the case of a significant number of home burglaries, the perpetrator and the stolen property are usually not found. However, we can significantly increase the effectiveness of this if we can provide the police with adequate evidence.