Tracking a Thief

Back in September or so we had a Warmshowers 'guest' staying with us. He claimed to be a frame builder from Montana traveling to his new home in Florida. Sometime during his stay this 'gentleman' helped himself to our Hilleberg Ajan inner tent!

Because of the time of year he stayed with us the theft wasn't noticed until last week when I was checking our equipment for an upcoming tour. The tent that had been in its Helleberg bag, had been replaced with a skirt that my wife had made many years ago for the county fair, so the tent bag appeared to contain the inner tent. Cost to replace a Helleberg Ajan inner tent $249.95 plus $7.00 shipping.

Because so much time had passed since his stay I didn't remember his name. I thought to myself, no problem, I'll go to my feedback and get his name. The feedback I left for him was gone, while the feed back for all of our other guests was still there. I'm assuming he deleted his profile page, because of his evil deeds, thus deleting the feedback I had left about him.

People like that probably are using fake names and fake profiles and change them as often as they change their socks, so tracking a thief becomes much more difficult. And of course they know that.

Being able to delete your profile page thus deleting feedback from the host's posters page seems to be a hole in the system that should be filled.

I have learned from this experience and will take steps to be able to identify people who stay with us. Photos and a sign in sheet come to mind.

I'm really not sure how much good taking the tent would have done him as it was only the inner tent and had no poles or rainfly!