Thieving bastards

[hedgepeg]

I was in the Dairy Ground - I left my barrow for five minutes and someone had the wheel off it. And my toothbrush and paste mysteriously disappeared.

[Caffre]

This was my first trip to Glastonbury and I'm not 100% sure where we where set up but we had to walk up what my husband told me was called the hill of death. Anyway, he spotted a group of 4 or 5 guys milling about the cars parked by the path on the hill. He does security at events himself and has a good eye and he spotted that not one of them had wristbands on. We thought they were going to try something to get in (this was on the Saturday), or maybe steal from the cars so we told security. The security guy said he was 'watching them'. Don't think he was too interested, even though they were causing trouble and arguing with one of the car owners. My husband was a bit disappointed as with no wristbands they had no real business being there.

So, maybe the people stealing are (fingers crossed anyway) from offsite taking advantage. Personally I thought security on the most part was spot on, and the police very good. Its just a pity there are people out there out for themselves and dont care who they hurt.

[LloydForever]

Woke up on the Wednesday night after hearing something by my feet to find an arm coming through the door going through my pile of clothes at my feet, as I was half asleep I thought it was my friend and grabbed their wrist, and soon discovered it was a robbing bastard! After a bit of a struggle I managed to dodge a couple of punches before being kicked swiftly in the face! Luckily nothing got stolen, and he kicked like a girl

In hindsight I wish I had been more awake to smack him in the face with my saucepan or at least shout 'Thief!!'

Other than that I had no other incidents!

[Spindles]

A fried of mine camped on Top Webbs Ash. Had £150 taken from his wallet in the night, from inside his sleeping bag while he slept.

This theft, along with the VAST majority of others, was not reported (although I tried to convince him to). Reported figures are down every year, yet to those onsite it feels like this problem is getting worse, not better. I would be pretty sure that a poll of efestivals readers would reveal more thefts than reported.

[angelesque]

Was in Dairy Ground. We were fine (despite boyf leaving HIS WALLET IN THE TENT - TWICE (seriously... WTF)but heard people around our tent talking around us about a girl who'd had stuff nicked. Don't know if it helped that we have a tent with an inner sleeping bit - do the thieves really unzip the outer door, then root about to unzip the inner bit? genuine q - no idea.

In any case, boyf and I had agreed not to take anything we couldn't afford to get stolen. I slept with my bag by my head every night, but even so it sounds like I was lucky. Thieving sh*ts - the (tiny) minority ruining it for the lovely majority. GRRR

[kaanypooch]

We were in Dairy and I came back Saturday night to find mine and two other of our tents unzipped. Noone had anything taken though and none of has kept anything of any value in the tents anyway.

[KingOfSnake]

Don't know if it helped that we have a tent with an inner sleeping bit - do the thieves really unzip the outer door, then root about to unzip the inner bit? genuine q - no idea.

[Mizydoscape]

Camped at the top of Pennards under the tree and came back to find one of the zips to our porch open on Thursday evening, nothing valuable was left in the tent but someone had taken my OH's crate of cider out of the porch , tbh it was his own fault for leaving it in the box in the porch. I had spread my ciders around under blankets and airbed and they hadnt been touched (also kept them nice and cool )

[Spindles]

Friends tent was a 4 man tent with 2 inner sleeping compartments, they went into his compartment and apparently managed to remove his wallet from his sleeping bag, have the cash out and away. Other compartment was empty at the time as the lucky git was off, well, getting lucky.

[Sabcully]

I was curious about this sort of thing this year, so I took a couple of "sample" Blackberry phones I had been given. They are older models (about 18 months) demos, for phone shops to use. They are made using all the same outside parts - even the buttons push in the same way! Same weight and all too! The only way to tell is to try and use them - and then wonder why the image doesn't change on the (very realistic) screen.

I left one under the bed, the other by my head under the clothing there, and they were not even moved. I even left one (face down) uncovered for the Sunday night / Monday - and it still was not touched!

This was in Kidney Mead. Didn't hear anyone else talk about thefts round our way.

[EasyUserName]

Tough Luck !!

[GingerRock]

Wednesday night. Row Mead. Had three separate visitors to our tent. Torches, outer zip open, and something like "Steve, you there?". Accents varied from London to Manchester. A shout of "f**k Off" each time and they legged it. Hate to think what would have happened had I not woke up. The missus slept through 2 of them. After the first I kept awake. Sort of ruined my first night.

Lots of people nearby reported intruders at night. But didn't hear of thefts. Next to us were 2 girls with a 1 man tent each. They were quite spooked by it all.

Didn't see any security or police in the field all night. Maybe they were undercover.

[Lucanesque]

Camped up in Top Webb Ash / Hawkwell, and my mate and I had our tents unzipped mid morning / early afternoon on Saturday, nothing nicked but put that down to no cash in the tent and my tent looking like a bombshell

[angelesque]

Camped up in Top Webb Ash / Hawkwell, and my mate and I had our tents unzipped mid morning / early afternoon on Saturday, nothing nicked but put that down to no cash in the tent and my tent looking like a bombshell

[Phil-itfc]

luckily didn't have anything stolen, but did get a security bloke think me and my mate were robbing our tent (ovb he didn't know this was our tent) when asked what we were upto going through the tent we explained its our tent and were picking up some more beers for the evening and even let him look inside if he wanted to question us about the conents of the tent to prove it was ours. so it was nice to know security were on the look out. this was in the new campsite near the coach station.

[JustMartin]

I tend to think of a different method each year of keeping my money safe.

What I did this year was put any money i had in an empty can of beer (made sure it was as empty as possible) when i went to sleep.

In the morning I just cut the can open with a pen knife and repeated that each night.

This way, if anyone does come into your tent looking for cash, they will find an empty wallet and an empty can of Carlsberg next to you sleeping bag.

[GingerRock]

After wednesday night was thinking of securing zip from inside. In the end didn't bother, as had heard about the tent slashers of last year. ANyone think it would have been advisable?

[daley]

I camped in a tent with 2 rooms and a porch, so I tied the inner zips together when I was sleeping plus tied a can of cider to it so if they try and zip it,the cider dropping will wake me up! x

[APC]

Did anyone set a pikey trap in their tent and end up catching themselves in it?

[pie_and_a_pint]

It's about minimising risk.

-Peg yourself in to your tent (i.e. rifle about under the front of the flysheet and peg together the elastic loops so the door's harder to open (don't do this if you think you might need to get out quickly to throw up / run to the loo in the middle of the night!). Make sure any velcro is properly closed - it'll make a noise when it's opened.

-Use a piece of wire or ribbon to tie your inner section zips together so they can't be opened from the outside (again, not OK if you might have an emergency in the night!)

-If you must keep wallet / phone etc on you, use a carabiner clip (like the ones climbers use - they sell them in Milletts) to attach it to somewhere on your person (clipped to your wristband inside a long-sleeved top, say, or clipped inside your bra or pyjama bottoms) or use a money belt / bumbag. That way, someone's going to have to get pretty intimate with you to nick anything - they won't go to this effort in case they wake you up.

-Make your tent a mess. Leave stuff in the porch or by the door that will put people off (smelly walking boots? A particularly stinky t-shirt? A load of empty cans that will make a noise?)

But most importantly:

-Put everything of value (i.e. cash, camera, high-end mobile) in the lock-ups before you go to bed. If no-one had any valuables in their tents, the thieves wouldn't bother to try. As it is, they know that, especially early on in the festival, very drunk/stoned/tired people are sleeping with hundreds of pounds of cash on them. It's too tempting for them.

Edited June 28, 2010 by pie_and_a_pint

[Yorkshire Chomper]

10th glasto for me and yet again me and my group suffered no losses. and we've camped all over the site over the years. must be very lucky by sounds of this thread. my mate lost his phone at stone circle on wednesday, i rang it and day later received a text from some random person saying they'd found it. my mate got the phone back.

[18Alex18]

We were camping in Michael's Mead and heard nothing about thefts. Then again, we did have a hat 'go missing' and with some of the bizarre things that other people have mentioned then it's not too farfetched.

[LondonTom]

Can't believe the thefts that happened in Dairy Ground, its where I was and we heard nothing til the final night of anything bad happening around us, when some kids camped next to us had there tent destroyed (They had a bit of debate if it one of them or someone they know I think, not sure what they decided in the end.).

Scary stuff, but the property lock ups are a brilliant service, even if I did only use it the first few nights(various reasons of not being bothered the others) and really friendly staff at all hours of the night. Although the first time I went it seemed bit dogey with just the bit of paper being took, the other times they asked for my details that I wrote down

[___S_o_m_a__]

Anyone else have their money stolen? My wife and I had our wallets taken out of our tents from literally under out faces in our tents while we slept...

[iamstreety]

Never thought about using the lock ups before, taken the 'it won't happen to me' approach. This thread has definitely changed my view.

I'll be locking away my goodies next year.