Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Police: OnStar not always effective Company’s tracking service does not extend to Mexico, where many stolen automobiles wind up.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 20:12:49 -0400

Police: OnStar not always effective Company’s tracking service does not
extend to Mexico, where many stolen automobiles wind up

By ERIC GARZA

The Monitor

McALLEN — Gustavo Acevedo woke up on the morning of March 21 ready to
drop off his children at school in his green H2 Hummer, the same routine
he’s followed since he bought the vehicle in November.

But when he left the house, he stepped onto an empty driveway. Someone
had taken the Hummer while he was asleep.
"I walked my dog at about 11:30 the night before and my car was there,"
Acevedo said. "I went to bed, woke up in the morning and it was gone."

But Acevedo was confident it would be only a matter of hours before the
car returned to his driveway. When he purchased the Hummer, it came with
OnStar as part of its features.

OnStar offers its subscribers a variety of features such as remotely
unlocking the vehicle’s doors if the keys are locked inside and a call
center for driving directions. It also boasts that it can track a stolen
vehicle within a matter of minutes, using a wireless phone and Global
Positioning Systems. The subscriber is charged monthly for the various
features. However, the company’s services do not extend into Mexico,
where most stolen cars in the Valley end up.

Acevedo quickly reported the car stolen to the McAllen Police Department
and then called OnStar to ask them to track his car. About five hours
later, an OnStar representative contacted the South Texas Auto Theft
Task Force and told them they had received a signal from the stolen car
near Trenton and McColl roads. The signal was picked up for a short time
before it was lost.

The company called again at about 3 p.m., telling officers that it had
another signal near 10th Street and Trenton Avenue, only a few blocks
from where it had been stolen.

Law enforcement authorities did not want to see the thief slip through
their fingers, so officers from the auto theft task force, along with
McAllen police, combed the area for hours, looking for the vehicle that
OnStar told them was less than a block away. The task force even asked
for assistance from a U.S.  Border Patrol helicopter.

After several hours, the task force called off the search. OnStar
representatives were adamant that the car was less than a block away
from where officers were searching.

But Lt. Francisco Ortegon with the South Texas Auto Theft Task Force
said that what happened to investigators that day is an example of
previous stolen vehicle experiences with the company.

"So far, OnStar has not been of any use to us or our counterparts in
Brownsville or Harlingen," Ortegon said. "The only one time (OnStar was
helpful) in the year and a half that I have been here was when a car
that was stolen here was found in Brownsville. But that was only because
it was left abandoned for about three days."

A spokeswoman at OnStar’s offices in Michigan said that after looking
through the recorded data from that Wednesday, she can’t say what
exactly went wrong.

"I looks like we had some kind of operator error in that situation,"
said Geri Lama, a spokeswoman for OnStar. "We went through our timeline
and we can’t exactly pin down what it was. We keep records between
advisers and vehicles (and) it looked like they were tracking the
Hummer, but in fact it sounds like they were tracking the Escalade
instead. So there was some kind of glitch somewhere."

She added that the situation is something rarely seen by the company and
its services.

"They don’t happen very often," Lama said. "We’d hear about it more if
it was (the case). This is kind of rare. We have about 800 stolen
vehicles requests a month, so we have experience with this sort of thing
and don’t hear about this happening very often."

"It’s not a help, not for what we need," Ortegon said. "What we need is
for them to get back to us in two minutes and tell us, ‘The car is
here.’ They always tell us, ‘Well, we can have it for you in two hours.’
We had one of their customers that was cussing them out here over the
phone."

Posted by: Mike Perez on Apr 19, 04

http://www.valleystar.com/localnews_more.php?id=52923_0_19_0_M
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From: Rick Parrish <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 13:40:27 -0500

>he’s followed since he bought the vehicle in November.
That explains the green hummer I saw in Matamoros ...

Seriously, McAllen is right on the border with Mexico. In this case at 
least, this isn't a technology issue - it's a jurisdiction issue.

-rick

 
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