This is not for me (thankfully), however today at a friend's game shop he ran into this with a customer. I helped out a bit but I was wondering what precautions would be smart to take and what is best to be done. Keep in mind this is limited to my experience in the United States. In short: This guy had his house broken into last night and someone stole his PS4 and his roommate's PS4. The roommate had their box with serial number on hand, he did not. He bought his PS4 2 years ago from my friend's shop so my friend went out of his way to go back through his invoices, find this guy's invoice, and catalog the information leading to which PS4 it might be (this guy couldn't properly verify his info but my friend only sold a handful of PS4s during that time period). My friend actually pulled me in at that point while I was browsing his selection, as I had been overhearing a bit I was actually on my phone pulling up a thread on Reddit I remembered I saw and texted this guy the link as well as told him how he could have Sony help him: https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/2bcgf6/any_way_to_track_a_stolen_ps4/ The guy had already preemptively filed a police report, tried to get his serial number from Sony's support (with no help), and was at my friend's shop trying to get it. He was also keeping an eye on Craigslist up to a 300 mile radius and had also called all the local game shops in the area. The disheartening thing was he told me the store I used to work at was actually the only one not willing to help him and was also quite rude! When he called and asked if he could give them the serial number to keep track of his roommate's PS4 they immediately cut him off and said they couldn't do anything about it unless the police came there. Now in addition to people sharing tips and tricks I do have a question to pose to you all regarding that last comment I made: Is that a normal thing for a game shop to do? It's quite surprising especially when I saw my friend going through such lengths to pull up old invoices, and I'm honestly wondering if there's some type of legal boundary they can't cross or if they were refusing to help for monetary reasons. Although I think this would be good to spin it back on the community: If you have gotten your consoles stolen, and have successfully gotten them back, maybe contribute the following? Country: What steps were done to recover stolen property: How long it took: Any other helpful tips:
Look at pawn shops, not just game stores. Also see if his profile comes online on your PS4 if you can.
I'm sure he's trying that as well, and the post I linked from Reddit details that pretty well. Sony can monitor accounts from an IP level.
Seeing this post remembered me when people broke into our house back in the late 90's and took my SNES that my godfather had gifted me. Cops came looked for figerprints and everything but at the end we got nothing, nowadays you can find stolen stuff quickly I wish I could get that SNES back
All the gameshop care about is ID and how much they'll make. It's very hard to prove that the console is yours. For all they're aware of you could've grabbed the box from someone's rubbish, claiming it was stolen. Guessing where you're from it's a common response to be told "police need to be here". Businesses owe you nothing, even if your friend worked there for 20+ years. My friends house was broken into and I was constantly checking online on Gumtree (aussie craigslist), nothing was popping up. It's just near impossible to prove an item is yours. Tracking down by serial number won't really help either. They targeted his house as it's obvious when he buys things. They knew what he had and took it all. Not only that but I told him to he should fix his security door and the lock on his entry door. All the thieves did was kick in his door. Claim on insurance, get them replaced it's what he ended up doing.
I had a Sega Genesis stolen but not much. Apparently the burglar though no one would be in the house for a while but my Mother had only gone out for a quick grocery shopping 5 miles away and was on the way back when the burglar fled with just a few items. Stolen: VCR that ate tape (we were about to throw it away for a new one, got a new one free via insurance), microwave, old TV (and didn't take the remote for TV) and my Genesis. The controller, video cables, and power cables plus all the games were still in place. He also left behind SNES, NES, Atari, Gameboy, and about 1,000 games. Never saw any of them again and serial number never turned up anything so the burglar have have sold privately and not in quick place like pawn shop. There was no CL or anything with internet back then, AOL had not offered flat rate yet, they were still charging online use per minute so internet use was rare and mostly limited to schools and major business and government, New VCR, was about the same overall plus worked, new microwave about 200w more powerful, and new Genesis and CD set with couple new pack in games so I ended up with more than what I lost. I guess I got lucky this one time because the burglar didn't plan on having to run so soon and thought he'd have the time to clean out everything. For the stuff I own and never plan to sell (this includes DVD, BD players, TV, etc), I scratch off the serial number (which makes it unsellable to most places) and with hot solder iron I engrave "Stolen from xxx xxx please call to confirm, reward if this leads to arrest" My laptop automatically logs online with IP address and it'd take a real expert linux hacker to disable auto logon & auto calling, and make it sell-able to the general people. My desktop is wired up in convoluted manner with a couple steel strings attached to my desk, they'd have to completely dismantle the computer to steal it and many burglars are idiots when it comes to selling computer parts or trying to reassemble the computer.
I wonder if the police and Sony can work together to retrieve stolen PS4? That would be awesome. My father used to be a detective in the small theft(under 5k$) department and he had a very high retrieval rate. Good cops usually knows how stolen goods "move", but most cops don't care about small stolen stuff. I'll always remember the time my sister had her car stolen, he found it before the "working" cops did!
