Tag: Trackers

Most people only find out what a Thatcham-approved tracker is when a letter arrives from their insurer. The renewal is conditional, the wording mentions a “Thatcham S5” or “Category S7” device, and there’s a deadline attached. From there it’s usually a quick search, a lot of conflicting information, and a growing suspicion that everyone selling one is telling you their brand is the only one that matters.

So here’s the honest version, from an installer’s point of view. There are three tiers of vehicle tracking, they do genuinely different jobs, and the difference between them matters far more than the badge on the box.

The three tiers, plainly

1. Self-monitored trackers (fleet trackers)

This is the entry level, and it is not Thatcham approved.

A self-monitored tracker reports its position to an app on your phone or to a fleet dashboard. You can see where the vehicle is, where it’s been, how long it sat somewhere, and often how it was driven. You can set a geofence so it pings you if the vehicle leaves a yard or a postcode.

What it doesn’t have is a monitoring centre. If the vehicle is stolen at three in the morning, nobody is watching the screen except you. You’d notice when you noticed, and then it’s on you to ring the police and relay a location to them yourself.

For a van fleet, a plant trailer, a company car being tracked for mileage records, or an owner who simply wants to know where their vehicle is, a self-monitored unit is genuinely useful and very cheap to run. What it will not do is satisfy an insurer who has asked for a Thatcham-approved device.

2. Thatcham S7

S7 is the first insurance-approved tier, and the jump from self-monitoring is bigger than it looks — because you’re no longer buying a device, you’re buying a service.

An S7 device is connected to a 24/7 secure operating centre. If the vehicle moves without the ignition being switched on — lifted onto a flatbed, dragged onto a trailer, rolled off a driveway — that’s an unauthorised movement. The centre sees it immediately and you get a phone call. If you confirm you haven’t authorised it, the theft is logged and the recovery process starts, with the centre liaising directly with the police.

S7 also covers the obvious tampering: battery disconnection, power loss, the unit being interfered with. All of it flags. For a lot of vehicles, S7 is exactly what the insurer has asked for and exactly what’s needed.

3. Thatcham S5

S5 is everything S7 does, plus the thing that actually matters on a modern car: Automatic Driver Recognition.

With S5 you carry a driver ID — a tag on your keyring, or a card in your wallet, depending on the system. The tracker looks for that ID whenever the vehicle is driven. Here’s why that changes everything.

Modern vehicle theft is very rarely someone breaking a window and hot-wiring a car. It’s relay attacks, key cloning, keyless repeaters and OBD programming. In almost all of those, the car is started and driven away perfectly normally, with the ignition on and the vehicle’s own systems perfectly happy. An S7 tracker sees a legitimate journey. It has no reason to alert anybody.

An S5 tracker sees a journey with no driver ID present. That’s an unauthorised drive-away, and you get the phone call — while the vehicle is still moving and still recoverable.

That single difference is why insurers specify S5 on high-value, high-performance and high-theft-risk vehicles. It’s aimed squarely at the way cars are actually being stolen now. Many S5 systems also support police-approved remote immobilisation and detect signal jamming, which thieves increasingly use to try to blind a tracker after the fact.

Side by side

Immobilisation can be added to any of the three

One point that gets missed: immobilisation isn’t tied to the tier you choose. An immobilisation circuit can be fitted alongside a self-monitored fleet tracker just as it can alongside an S7 or an S5.

That means the vehicle can be prevented from restarting once it has come to a stop — so a thief who pulls over, parks up and comes back for it later finds a vehicle that won’t go anywhere. On S5 systems it’s normally part of the approved specification and can be used during a live police recovery.

Worth saying clearly, though: if immobilisation is what you actually want as your main defence, a tracker is the wrong place to start. A dedicated CAN-bus immobiliser — an Autowatch Ghost II or a Nitro Pro — is a stronger and cheaper answer to that particular problem, because it stops the vehicle being driven in the first place rather than helping you get it back afterwards. Plenty of our customers run both: an immobiliser to prevent the theft, a tracker to recover the vehicle if someone gets it onto a trailer regardless.

Which one does your insurer actually want?

Don’t guess this, and don’t take a salesman’s word for it either. Read the policy wording or the letter, and if there’s any ambiguity, ring the insurer and get it in writing. They will normally specify:

• The category — S5 or S7
• That it must be professionally installed, often by a TASSA-approved or otherwise accredited installer
• That the subscription must remain active for the life of the policy

That last one catches people out. A Thatcham tracker without a live subscription is not an approved tracker — it’s a dead box in a dashboard. If the subscription has lapsed at the moment of a theft, you may find the claim disputed. Insurers frequently ask for a certificate of installation and proof of an active subscription, so keep both somewhere you can find them.

Does the brand actually matter?

This is the question we get asked most, and the honest answer isn’t the one most companies give. The UK market includes, among others:

• SmarTrack
• Meta Trak
• Track Manager
• Vodafone Automotive
• Scorpion Automotive
• Moving Intelligence
• Tracker
• Trackm8
• Autowatch
• ECOTRAK
• Moto Halo

There is no single best product. That isn’t a dodge — it’s the whole point of the Thatcham standard. Approval means a device and its monitoring service have been independently tested against a fixed benchmark. An S5 from one manufacturer and an S5 from another have both cleared the same bar. Neither is “more approved” than the other.

What actually differs between them is smaller and more practical than the marketing suggests:

• How you carry your driver ID. Some use a tag for your keyring, some a card for your wallet. Sounds trivial. It isn’t — it’s the thing you’ll interact with every single day, and a customer who finds it annoying is a customer who leaves it in the house.
• The app. Some are excellent, some are clunky.
• Subscription cost, and whether it’s monthly, annual or multi-year.
• Customer service, which you’ll only appreciate when something goes wrong.
• Physical size, which determines how well the unit can be concealed.

Beyond that, a GPS tracker is a GPS tracker. They all find satellites and they all report over the mobile network.

Where the real difference is: the installation

Here’s the part that genuinely affects how well your system works, and it has nothing to do with the brand.

Different tracking systems integrate with different vehicles in different ways, particularly where immobilisation is involved. Some units work beautifully on one manufacturer’s CAN system and throw faults on another. Some need a different approach on a hybrid or an EV. Some are far easier to conceal in one model than another.

An experienced installer knows which unit behaves itself in your specific vehicle, and that knowledge prevents the problems that make people hate their tracker: spurious alerts, warning lights, batteries draining, systems that need constant attention.

So the sensible order is: ask the installer first, then pick the product. Not the other way round. Choosing a brand because you’ve heard the name, or because you had one on a previous car, is how you end up with a system that’s a poor fit for the vehicle it’s going into.

Elite Car Security is TASSA approved (member no. 0009) with over 30 years in vehicle security, and we’re mobile — we come to your home or workplace across Essex, Hertfordshire and North London and fit the system there.

Why we rate Track Manager

We fit a range of systems and we’ll always recommend what suits the vehicle. That said, if you asked us which one we reach for most often, it’s Track Manager — for reasons that are entirely practical:

• 4G devices. Worth more than it sounds. Older 3G units are living on borrowed time as networks retire 3G, and a tracker is no use at all if it can’t get a signal out.
• Reliable, with a low fault rate in service.
• Small and compact, which means far more options for concealing it properly.
• Outstanding customer service — the thing you notice when you actually need them.
• Competitive subscriptions.

But the feature we like most is this: you can move between tiers at any time.

Start with a self-monitored fleet tracker because that’s all you need today. If your insurer later asks for an S7, or your next renewal demands an S5, the system can be upgraded — rather than you paying out again for a completely different tracker and a second installation. Moving up to S5 doesn’t even need another visit: the driver ID tags are simply posted out to you. It works the other way too. If you sell the high-value car and the requirement drops away, you can come back down a tier instead of paying for cover you no longer need.

For anyone whose insurance requirements might change — or who isn’t sure yet what they’ll be asked for — that flexibility is worth a great deal.

Frequently asked questions

Will any tracker satisfy my insurance?
No. A self-monitored or fleet tracker, however good, is not Thatcham approved and will not meet an insurer’s requirement for an S5 or S7 device.

What’s the actual difference between S5 and S7?
S7 alerts you when the vehicle moves without the ignition on — being towed or lifted. S5 does that too, and adds driver ID tags, so it also alerts you when the vehicle is driven away without your tag present. That covers relay and key-cloning theft, which S7 does not.

Do I have to pay a subscription?
Yes, for any Thatcham-approved tracker. The approval covers the monitoring service as well as the hardware, and your insurer will expect the subscription to be active.

Can I fit it myself?
Not if it needs to satisfy an insurer. Approved installation by an accredited installer is normally a condition, and you’ll usually need a certificate of installation to prove it.

Which brand is best?
None of them, and all of them. Choose on subscription cost, how you’d rather carry your driver ID, and — most importantly — which system your installer knows works properly in your vehicle.