Katie and her husband were watching Bridgerton when the TV flickered, the wifi faltered and, then, minutes later, her phone rang.
‘It was the tracker company we subscribed to for our Range Rover,’ the mother of two explains. ‘The voice said, “Can you please check on your car?’’ ’
Katie, 39, a bookkeeper, went to peek through the curtains to the driveway where she had parked her grey Range Rover Velar in Finchley, North London.
‘It was gone. Somehow the thieves had briefly disconnected our wifi, blocking the TV signal and preventing our Ring doorbell from capturing any footage – and taken our car.’
As her mind flashed back through memories her family had made with their sleek, luxury four-wheeler, Katie was nearly in tears. But if you assumed it was the Range Rover she was mourning, you’d be wrong.
Katie was most upset about losing her toddler’s buggy, which was stored in the back of the car.
‘The car was leased and insured, and I wasn’t attached to it. But I’d pushed my Babyzen YoYo buggy around the park for hours trying to get my two sons to sleep. I’d even taken it to Disneyland. I had specially taken photos of both my boys in the buggy at the same age. Losing it felt devastating.’
It turned out the thieves also appreciated the value of Katie’s pram – the YoYo is a celebrity favourite, beloved by parents including Kim Kardashian, Justin Timberlake and model Chrissy Teigen.
When the tracker company located the car later that night in Haringey, about ten minutes from Katie’s home, the buggy was gone.
Alexis Cope, a mum-of-three living in London’s Hampstead, has had a YoYo pram stolen and says she felt ‘violated’ by the crime
Katie says: ‘The police agreed to meet us at our car in case the thieves came back. The car was undrivable – all the lining had been ripped out as the thieves searched for the tracker – and they had stolen my beloved YoYo and my children’s car seats.’
Many new cars have sophisticated digital trackers, so a common criminal tactic is to steal a vehicle, dump it and wait a few days to check if it’s being monitored. It’s flogged overseas if not – but if it is? A lucrative and increasingly common plan B is to sell the contents: a family’s buggy or pram.
And the YoYo, which costs more than £300 new, is in high demand. Since it folds up to the size of a briefcase and fits into an airplane’s cabin, the YoYo has become the Mini of the buggy world: an icon of parenting kit that barely depreciates in value, making it a target for thieves.
There are many far more expensive pram models out there, with some costing up to £1,500.
Jeff Hill is a former chief detective superintendent who now works on security for the super-rich via property agency The Private Office. He says that, with trackers making it harder for thieves to resell stolen cars, some vehicles are now being broken into purely to allow criminals to steal the contents, with buggies a top target.
He adds: ‘Taking a buggy from a car is low risk and high reward. Buggies don’t usually have serial numbers or markers that make them traceable; they have high resale value and it’s unlikely police are going to be able to prove a buggy belongs to someone else. Very expensive buggies will be stolen to order – a £1,000 buggy you can sell quickly for £700 is a good day’s business.’
This is a fast-growing crime. The Metropolitan Police said that between January 2021 and July this year, 1,500 buggies and wheelchairs (which are recorded together) were reported stolen in London alone. Rates are accelerating: in 2021, 322 were stolen, according to a freedom of information request, but if this year’s trend continues, almost 600 families will report prams stolen in the capital in 2024. The actual number of thefts is far higher, since only a fraction of cases are reported to the police.
My own family’s YoYo buggy was stolen from my car boot this summer. Initially I couldn’t believe a stained, ten-year-old buggy would be prime loot for a burglar. Barely a patch of my YoYo’s fabric was unmarked – by a vomit incident six years ago, sticky lolly stains, and an exploding suncream in the pocket.
The Babyzen YoYo is a celebrity favourite, beloved by parents including Kim Kardashian, Justin Timberlake and Chrissy Teigen
But when I logged onto eBay to buy a second-hand replacement, I not only found plenty of sellers flogging ten or 20 YoYos for £200 each – I also found my own buggy.
I knew those unique stains – that no amount of wet wipes would remove – would come in handy one day. I felt sick when I spotted it: the thief must have taken out my son’s artwork which we had carefully zipped into the pocket, and ripped off the attached cuddly toys that my three children had hugged to sleep over a decade of naps.
The police advised me against buying the buggy, and said they would be in touch in a few days. But I needed to push my toddler on the school run and didn’t want to purchase another second-hand YoYo online – when that could quite possibly have been stolen from another family.
So I paid £200 for my own buggy and five days later, it was delivered back to me. Ebay eventually accepted my proof the YoYo was my own, and issued a refund. But the seller, who posted new listings daily for electric vehicle charging cables, YoYo and Bugaboo prams, continued to trade.
This despite the fact I’d given their address to the police. The Met said: ‘Due to a lack of positive lines of enquiry, this investigation was filed [closed] on September 19.’
As for rising buggy theft, the Force said: ‘We can’t speculate around the increase in a particular crime type, but we can offer crime prevention advice on our website.’
Unlike the surge in mobile phone pickpocketing, security experts don’t think buggy theft is down to criminal gangs – but rather fast-working individuals who make use of sites like Facebook Marketplace, Shpock, Vinted and eBay plus car boot sales to flog their wares.
Some work at night, checking for unlocked boots or hacking into key fobs to unlock cars, then photographing their night’s haul of buggies and listing them online hours later.
Others opportunistically poach buggies from communal hallways. April Barnes’s £400 Bugaboo Butterfly was stolen from outside her flat in Camden, north London, while she prepared to take her sick toddler to A&E.
In Thurston, Suffolk, Sophie Ransom’s home was broken into, with thieves stealing her black off-road buggy. Generally, victims say the police take details but say they cannot help.
Alexis Cope, a mum-of-three living in London’s Hampstead, has faced a string of thefts from her Volvo XC 60, including her YoYo pram. ‘The overriding feeling was of violation,’ the 41-year-old explains. ‘I was so upset – and then the practical problems set in, with three children under six. I had to buy a new one.
‘The police did not respond to my call for two days, then said they couldn’t help without more evidence.’
Alexis has now extended her family’s home alarm to the car, adding a motion sensor so when thieves enter the vehicle – often using a device that first intercepts the signal between the car and the key fob, then clones it, and unlocks the car – the home alarm is set off.
‘It has scared them away twice so far, and we have it all on CCTV too. But the fact we have to have built-in security is terrifying.’
There are other ways to help keep your buggy safe. Never leave it unwatched at the park or on the doorstep, even if it’s only for two minutes. Invest in a combination lock that fits around a buggy’s handle whenever you’re out and about – you could even lock it to an internal handle in your car.
Police recommend using ultraviolet ink to mark a buggy with your name and postcode.
Other tactics deployed by parents include attaching Tile or AirTag trackers into the fabric of buggies, and painting the chassis or fabric in bright, distinctive colours to make them less sellable.
‘The most important thing,’ adds former chief detective superintendent Jeff Hill, ‘is to constantly remind yourself of your buggy’s value. You wouldn’t leave a £1,000 or £300 watch on a table in a cafe. Buy a cheap, concealable tracker, and never leave a buggy unlocked, or uncovered in your car.’