What to do if your motorhome is stolen

Keith Gooden

In today’s episode of the Motorhome Matt podcast…

Matt Sims

What should you do if your motorhome is stolen?

Keith Gooden

In the news, we’re 150 podcasts old!

Matt Sims

Woohoo! And we answer your questions on refillable gas adapters and lithium setups.

Keith Gooden

Welcome to the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.

Matt Sims

And I’m Motorhome Matt.

Keith Gooden

Industry insights and expert advice for the world of motorhomes, caravans and campervans – brought to you by www.thatleisureshop.com.

Matt Sims

Remember, please follow on your favourite podcast app and make sure you subscribe on YouTube. Brought to you by our friends at www.arobasecreative.co.uk.

Keith Gooden

In the news today – 150 episodes old. That’s how many podcasts we’ve done, over 800,000 views and downloads, and it’s growing. And it’s thanks to all our viewers and listeners.

Matt Sims

Yes, indeed. Thank you for watching and putting up with us 150 times.

Keith Gooden

Who ever thought there was so much to talk about?

Matt Sims

Well, I knew there’d be a lot to talk about, but yeah, 150 in is a lot, isn’t it?

Keith Gooden

When you think a lot of podcasts don’t make it past the first 12 episodes, I think we need a slap on the back and we need an award.

Matt Sims

Well done. Yes, well done.

Keith Gooden

Thank you very much.

What should you do if your motorhome is stolen?

Keith Gooden

It’s the Motorhome Matt podcast, I’m Keith Gooden.

Matt Sims

And I’m Motorhome Matt.

Keith Gooden

And it’s brought to you with www.thatleisureshop.com. The meat of the podcast today is all about what to do if your motorhome is stolen.

Matt Sims

Heaven forbid. Let’s hope it’s not. But what do you do if it is nicked? What do you do? What’s the process you go through? We recently had an episode on trackers with Guy from GPSBob. You can check that out. But we thought we’d run through what actually happens if your motorhome is stolen.

Keith Gooden

Absolutely. If you haven’t got a tracker fitted at that moment that you realise it’s stolen, the adrenaline starts pumping. What do I do? You pick up the phone to the police. They give you a crime number. You get on the phone to the insurance company. But if you have a tracker fitted, you do different things. What are they?

Matt Sims

Well, normally – let’s assume that the motorhome is in storage – the tracking company are constantly monitoring it provided you’ve got some kind of subscription that you’re paying for. And this is a reason to have a tracker with a subscription. It might be that you have to have a Thatcham approved tracker because of the value of the motorhome.

Keith Gooden

What’s Thatcham approved?

Matt Sims

So Thatcham approved – it’s a kind of a standard. It’s a standard and a bar of approval from Thatcham, which is an independent company that assesses the tracker’s ability to do the job right.

Keith Gooden

Yeah. And if you don’t know what a tracker is, just quickly, it’s very secretly installed in your motorhome or whatever you want tracked by a professional company. And then it can be switched on if your property is stolen, and they know where it is in the world.

Matt Sims

That’s right. Well, normally they’re on all the time, and they’re pinging a location, and then if something happens to the motorhome like it moves without the keys in the ignition, or it’s a caravan and there’s a secret switch that you haven’t switched, and the caravan’s moved without that happening, or the battery is disconnected, the tracker sends an alert to the tracking company.

And they will ring you and say, “We’ve had an alert on your tracker, get in touch.” And then there’s a process you go through where you probably have to ring the tracking company and say, “I’m nowhere near it. Something untoward is happening,” and that’s then where this process kicks in.

Keith Gooden

So what is that process then, Matt? What happens when the tracking company thinks that maybe your property has gone walkies?

Matt Sims

They will ring you, and normally it’s a recorded message. And they rely on you ringing them back to report that your vehicle is safe, and you know where it is, and it’s you taking the battery off, and they’ll stand down. Or they’ll escalate things and you say, “Yeah, it’s been stolen. Something’s interfering with it,” and they’ll step things up then.

Keith Gooden

So do they contact the police, or do you still have to do that?

Matt Sims

The first thing they’re going to do is if you’ve told them it’s been nicked, they’re going to block your access to the tracker.

Keith Gooden

Why?

Matt Sims

I recently learned this. It’s to stop a vigilante response.

Keith Gooden

Yeah, to stop you hopping in a car with a load of your mates and baseball bats!

Matt Sims

Yeah, the risk is, I think it’s about protecting you from injury. So they block your access to it. And I didn’t know this until I was talking with Guy at GPSBob, and it’s normal protocol. They will then contact the police and give them all the details of the tracker.

And they often have the ability to make the tracker start pinging very regularly, so it’s constantly reporting its location. Some tracking companies have a specialist agency like a private detective, who they will call, and they will then exercise the ability to go and recover the vehicle.

Keith Gooden

A bit like bailiffs.

Matt Sims

A bit like bailiffs, and they might use the police, or they might not. But they will go in, and they might be wearing protective clothing which means if they’re going to get themselves into a confrontation, they stay safe.

Keith Gooden

My guess is they do ask for a police officer to be present while they conduct their operation.

Matt Sims

I guess it depends on where it’s found. I remember a story once of a motorhome hire company which had a vehicle stolen, and one of these agencies went and found the vehicle in a dock in Dover.

And one little plastic box, this one tracking device that cost a few pounds a month recovered £5 million worth of stolen plant and machinery, including the motorhome and several other motorhomes there. They were all ready to be exported.

Keith Gooden

I looked at some figures. According to www.tracker.co.uk, 95% of vehicles with trackers fitted are recovered. That compares with just under 30%, about 28% – that’s official figures to say, if you have a vehicle stolen, only about 28% are recovered. So 28% compared to 95% – I mean, yeah, it’s a subscription, and some people might think it’s expensive, but it seems like a bit of a no-brainer if you’ve just invested £100,000 in a motorhome.

Matt Sims

Well, with £100,000, you have no choice. The insurance company will insist that you have a tracker. If it’s £40,000 or £50,000, they may not. I would say it’s definitely worth having a tracker fitted for that peace of mind. But it’s interesting how few are recovered without a tracker because obviously, nobody knows where they’ve gone.

And if you don’t have a tracker, what do you do? You know it’s gone because it was on your drive an hour ago, and now it’s not, so you can see that it’s gone missing. You wouldn’t know that in a storage yard. It might be weeks before you notice it’s missing. In that scenario, all you can do is phone the police, get a crime reference number, phone your insurers, and sit back and wait. And I would wager you’d be waiting a while.

Keith Gooden

As somebody who’s had a car stolen in the past, I can guarantee you’ll do one thing as soon as you realise your car’s gone off the drive or outside in the street. You’ll walk out and you’ll look around the corner. Don’t ask me while you do it, you just do it.

Matt Sims

I’d be breathing a sigh of relief. I saw your car. Thank goodness for that. I’d be claiming the insurance.

Keith Gooden

Now, we’ve got a very special guest on the podcast this week, actually, who isn’t necessarily taking Matt’s advice. Tell us a bit more about it, Matt.

Matt Sims

So I caught up with my friend Derek, who’s got a very expensive and beautiful Coachman caravan. And his caravan was stolen. What’s interesting is a lot of caravanners I’ve spoken to say, “If mine was nicked, I wouldn’t want it back!”

Well, Derek did get his back, and this is his story. Now we’re here in a rather unusual location. We’re in an empty launch field here at the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, not just with a caravan owner with a story, but Derek Maltby here is one of the balloonists flying at this event. You fly hot air balloons, don’t you?

Derek Maltby

I’ve been flying for about 38 years. Yes. I used to be on the organising committee here, but yeah, I just fly the Bristol balloon now and take a few people flying over the city. If the wind were to drop down here, then we would!

Matt Sims

Now, if you’ve ever seen the Bristol balloon flying over Bristol – Derek’s flown me many a time – you have a Super Soaker in your basket, don’t you? It is hilarious.

Derek Maltby

I do, yeah. I carry this Super Soaker, and I think it must be 28 years old. I’ve been bringing it to this Fiesta all of that time, and it goes to other fiestas as well. I’ve also got a little one-man balloon with no basket, and I go flying with that and squirt people from the air. And most of the kids love it. Some people with expensive cameras get a bit upset when I get their cameras wet. But most people think it’s a bit of a novelty.

Matt Sims

Yeah, I bet they are, as you are, Derek, in the balloon community, I’m sure. But anyway, let’s talk about your caravan experience. So you have a lovely caravan. You’ve got a Coachman caravan, which is not a cheap caravan. But tell me what happened.

Derek Maltby

We bought a caravan two years ago, actually, from Golden Castle Caravans in Tewkesbury. It’s a Lusso II. So with the motor movers and bells and whistles, it came to about £50,000. We had a few teething problems with it, as there are with most caravans, but in November last year, we had an alarm from the Phantom tracker company to say the battery had been taken out, and that started a whole sequence of events, and the whole thing actually was stolen.

Matt Sims

So your tracking company now, of course, Phantom, are Moving Intelligence. They alerted you to the fact that the battery had been taken out. So what did they do?

Derek Maltby

I had a phone call from Moving Intelligence to say, “There’s something wrong with your battery.” So I then looked at the app. It showed that there were no volts. And so I rang Golden Castle caravans.

And I said, “This is really unusual. I’ve owned the caravan for six years. I’m a bit of a newbie, but I’ve never had this even though it’s a very cold morning.” And they said, “Yes, it probably is just because it’s cold.” And we put it down to the fact that it was a very cold night and the battery had gone flat. That was the first reaction.

I was in Nottingham at the time. And then I had another warning on my Apple Watch to say, “Your caravan is moving along the Portway,” which is the A4 between Bristol and Bath. So it was stolen from near where we were on a farm in the Chew Valley area, and it was on its way to a place called Avonmouth.

Matt Sims

Okay, so did you go after it or did you call the police?

Derek Maltby

Because I was in Nottingham, I rang 999 from a lay-by. I was put through by Nottingham Police to Avon and Somerset Police. I explained what had happened, bearing in mind, that I’m a former police officer, so I used to be in charge of the force control room where 999 calls are received. I explained the predicament, I gave them all the information.

And the last question I was asked, which was a type of incidental question, was, “What ethnicity are you?” And what I realised afterwards, although that may be relevant to them, they never asked the value of the caravan, which was £50,000. Had they done so, perhaps their response would have been different to that which we’ve eventually found to be lacking.

Matt Sims

Well, I’d say so, because I understand they didn’t do anything.

Derek Maltby

Well, they didn’t. I was in Nottingham, and I rang the police again at half past six, and they said they’d got nobody to attend. I then rang again at 8:30 that evening. So bear in mind, it was stolen at about 2 pm in the afternoon. And I asked to speak to a duty inspector to make a formal complaint. Nobody rang me back.

I knew where the caravan was because of my previous employment. I’d been there in the past. It was stationary on that site for many hours and overnight, and the police seemed to do nothing about it until the following day when I saw that it was on the move. It had been on that site for 17 hours without any police interaction, investigation or visit.

And then the following day, I saw it was on the move, so I rang 999 again to Nottingham Police and said, “Please put me through. The vehicle is on the move. There’s a chance to apprehend the culprits.”

And Nottingham Police said, “Oh no, sorry, we can’t put you through.” I said, “You did yesterday.” “No, you’ve got to ring 101.” So I’m there on the phone for about 40 minutes to 101 waiting to be answered.

When it was answered, then I had to wait for it to be passed through to a dispatch handler. And then once I told them the story, they alerted their resources. They got some cops along the way. And I told them it got along the M4 and the M5 and the last sighting was at Michaelwood services on the M5. So they sent police officers there.

Now, that’s in the Gloucester Police area. And I spoke to police officers directly. I explained to them where the caravan was shown to be on the tracker. And they said, “Well, it’s not here.” It transpired that the battery had gone flat, and that’s the reason that the thieves took the battery out the day before because there’s a limited life on the tracker battery.

Matt Sims

So the tracker battery was flat?

Derek Maltby

Yes, so the tracker battery gave up the ghost. Had Nottingham Police transferred the 999 call immediately, it’s very likely that the battery would have been powered up to allow Avon and Somerset and or Gloucester police to react and apprehend the people in possession of the stolen caravan.

Matt Sims

But tell me, did you inform Moving Intelligence that the caravan was stolen and that they should do something about it as the tracker monitor?

Derek Maltby

Well, because I’d never had a caravan stolen before, I can’t remember – I would have rung them either on the Wednesday when it was stolen or the Thursday, the following day, to tell them what the situation was. And I had a contact number.

But they didn’t say, “Okay, we’ll take it on from here.” I was doing all the proactive work, looking at my phone every few minutes just to get an update and to see where the caravan was, and if it had moved.

And overnight from Wednesday into Thursday, it did move further into the site where it was stationary. So it was moving, but I didn’t use Moving Intelligence to alert the police. I was doing that because I didn’t know that that perhaps was one of the jobs that they should do.

Matt Sims

Yeah, well, it normally is. In fact, they have often an agency that will go and get the caravan back and recover it themselves to stop the risk of vigilante action by the owner. In fact, what normally happens is you alert a tracking company – and this is why I was intrigued, you see.

When they are told that the caravan or the motorhome has been stolen, they block your access to the tracker to stop you seeing where it is, to stop you from getting in the car with a bunch of mates and going and getting it and apprehending those that perhaps took it. And that’s why they do it. So, yeah, you were kind of doing this under your own steam. I guess as a former copper, you felt you could.

Derek Maltby

Well, exactly. And my second career was in security because I’m a security consultant. And so I was taking proactive action to coordinate resources. Now, had I not been in Nottingham and I had been in Bristol, I would have done exactly that.

I’m friendly with lots of former police officers. And if the serving police officers were reluctant to go and investigate, had I been local, I would have got a group of former cops, rugby players and others, and I would have gone and recovered that caravan. So I can understand why they would cease your activity or access to your Phantom tracker. But they didn’t do that for me.

Eventually, the caravan did become live on the tracker on Friday morning in North Wales. And it transpires they had put a battery in it to see if it had a tracker. They didn’t know if it did, and so they were testing us to see if it was still live. It was. I told the local police, who told North Wales Police, who then recovered the caravan, but at no time did Moving Intelligence say that they would take on any of these responsibilities.

Matt Sims

So were they even aware that it had been stolen?

Derek Maltby

I can’t remember exactly, but I believe I told them. I told the people who keep registration details of caravans on a sort of database.

Matt Sims

CRIS.

Derek Maltby

Yeah, CRIS. I told as many people as I could, and I circulated it on WhatsApp and Facebook because I didn’t know what else to do.

Matt Sims

So how long was the caravan taken from you?

Derek Maltby

It was missing from Wednesday and recovered on Friday, so two days. But in that time, £15,000 worth of damage was caused, and over £5,000 worth of personal property stolen. So it’s £20,000 worth.

Perhaps damage would have been caused. Perhaps there would have been some minor damage and some theft, but had the police acted in 17 hours when we knew where it was on one site, then it would have been much reduced, and it wouldn’t have been £20,000. And that’s why I’m suing the police because I believe that they failed to do their job.

Matt Sims

Well, good luck with that.

Derek Maltby

Thank you.

Matt Sims

So £20,000 worth of damage. Well, £15,000 worth of damage. What did they do to it?

Derek Maltby

When they stole it, it looked like they cut off the two wheel locks with oxyacetylene. So I think they damaged the wheels and the motor movers with the oxyacetylene kit. I think they must have had a puncture, or perhaps the oxyacetylene has caused a puncture, and they had to put a spare wheel on, and that was kerbed as well.

And you can see where they were probably driving with the rubber tyre deflated because it damaged the wheel arch. They got into the cab, and they were obviously trying to find the source of the tracker, and they did damage inside.

The bedding was stolen. The mattress was damaged. They took the nose weight device. So obviously, they’re very considerate. They want to know if they’re towing a correctly level-laden van. But there they took some odd things, our bedding, our pillows. Oh, and they took the wine and the whiskey, but they left the lager. They were obviously the discerning sort of thieves.

Matt Sims

So you’ve got the caravan back. What have you done now? It’s all been repaired. What have you done to mitigate it being stolen from you again?

Derek Maltby

Well, I didn’t want to go through the heartache and the distress, so I needed to find a secure compound where I could secure the caravan. Originally, it was stored on a farm. Nobody would have known it was there, so somebody passed the word to the thieves of where it was.

Now I’ve put it in a proper compound – your compound, actually, down near Congresbury, and it’s much more secure. We’ve got CCTV, we’ve got locked access, we’ve got access control, and I’m able to sleep peacefully at night knowing that it’s under good eyes.

Matt Sims

And it’s regularly kept an eye on by me and my team as well.

Derek Maltby

There you go. And there’s actual surveillance from other caravans going in and out, and there weren’t enough in this farm site – yours is clearly a proper CaSSOA site, is it?

Matt Sims

That’s right, yeah. We’re CaSSOA Gold.

Derek Maltby

And you’re a gold now, yeah. So it just gives me peace of mind. I don’t want to go through that again.

Matt Sims

No, I bet you don’t. Well, listen, thank you for sharing the story. And it’s interesting to hear what you did when you got the news or the alerts that the caravan had been taken. And the lesson here, I guess, is to tell your tracking company.

Because many we’ve spoken to, including GPSBob in a recent episode, have teams, as do Global Telemetrics, that will go out. And they’re specialists in recovering the asset and working with the police. So yeah, try and avoid vigilante action. Derek’s own experience is that the police just didn’t respond.

What steps should you take after your motorhome has been stolen?

Keith Gooden

Well, Matt, that was Derek Maltby, who had his caravan stolen. A very interesting tale. So if it happens to you, what do you do? Phone the police, phone the insurance company, and then you check your cover, I suppose.

Matt Sims

Well, it’s a bit late for that then. I mean, you want to make sure you’ve got adequate cover before it’s stolen!

Keith Gooden

My point is that when you’re negotiating or buying the cover in the first place, don’t necessarily go for the cheapest and the smallest amount, because you could be shooting yourself in the foot. What if you’re parking on a third party’s premises? A storage site, for instance?

Matt Sims

As Derek is now – he’s in our storage business.

Keith Gooden

So what do you do then?

Matt Sims

Well, you would follow the same protocol. The important thing is to alert the tracking company that something has happened. They can then deal with it far more effectively than you can, as Derek proved, because you’re just ringing, you know, 101.

Keith Gooden

I suppose the tracking company will say to the police, “The storage site has CCTV.” And the police then ask you for it.

Matt Sims

If it’s stolen from a storage site, the storage site – which should have CCTV, and hopefully they do – they may be able to capture the thieves taking it. People often say, “Well, claim off the storage site insurance.” Storage sites do not insure your assets. That is for you to insure.

The only insurance a storage site has is public liability. So if you’ve caused an injury which is a result of them doing something wrong, leaving a trip hazard out or something. They do not insure your assets. That is for you to insure.

They just provide a space which is secure, as you’re paying for. So our storage facility is a CaSSOA Gold site, and we have CCTV and floodlighting and all the rest of it, electric access control to get in and out.

We can look at who went through the gate using a key card, or if they’ve climbed a fence, it would be on camera, and we can capture that. And of course, you’re at the mercy of what they’re wearing as to whether they can be identified. So if they’ve got a hoodie on, you know, all we can see is a person wearing a hoodie. We can’t do any more than that. We’re fortunate. We’ve never actually had a caravan stolen from the site.

Keith Gooden

So let’s take everything into account. You’ve paid the subscription. The tracking company have taken over responsibility and contacted the police. And as we know, 95% of vehicles through official figures with trackers are recovered. So just to summarise, the first thing you shouldn’t do is what?

Matt Sims

Don’t try and fix it yourself.

Keith Gooden

Yeah, you’re paying a subscription. You’re engaging a contractor with a company that will do it for you.

Matt Sims

Absolutely. And don’t be a vigilante trying to go after it yourself, either. You can get in all sorts of trouble.

Keith Gooden

Well, you most certainly can. Tell your tracking company you believe it has been stolen, because there’s no point ringing the tracking company and say, “Well, I had my brother here, and he’s got a spare set of keys.” They’re not really interested in that. They’re interested in recovering stolen vehicles.

Matt Sims

The thing is, once you tell them you think it’s been stolen, they will then take action. They’re going to block your access to the tracker. They’re going to inform the police. They’ll inform this specialist agency, if they have one that they use, and they will work every endeavour they can resource to try and recover that asset for you. Whether or not you want it back, is a different issue, of course!

Keith Gooden

And then there’s the question as well about the police service. And can you rely on the police? Generally, you can, but it’s the police service, and they have lots of things to think about, and recovering your stolen motorhome while it’s the most important thing in your life isn’t more important than murders, rapes, etc, etc. So that’s why you are paying the subscription.

Matt Sims

That’s a very good reason to have a tracker on it where you get the support and backup of a tracking company to help go and recover it.

Audience Q&A

Keith Gooden

It’s the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.

Matt Sims

And I’m Motorhome Matt.

Keith Gooden

It’s time for our Q&A, our questions and answers. And what we do every week is take your questions, and Motorhome Matt is the expert who will answer them. And if he doesn’t know, he’ll ask somebody who does. First of all, Ed Cooper’s in Northumberland,

Ed Cooper

Further to your information on upplating, we just got ours and upplated to 4,000 kilos. And we were expecting the taxable rate to drop down to – was it £160, something like that? But I’m receiving a letter from them. This is not the case. It will stay at the original price for taxation. Just so I’d let you know update your many viewers. Thanks very much.

Keith Gooden

Cheers, Ed, thanks for the question. It’s not really a question, is it? It’s more of a statement. It’s about tax, isn’t it?

Matt Sims

Road tax, yeah. So when you’re three and a half tons or less, your road tax is… I think at the moment it’s £325 a year, but if you’re over that – so Ed’s gone to four tonnes – it’s £165 pounds a year.

But Ed says for some reason, he’s not going to get a refund, and they’re not going to bring the tax class down. It could be, Ed, that you’re just not getting a refund on this year’s road tax. I’d definitely contact the DVLA because it might be worth SORNing it and waiting until the end of the month.

Keith Gooden

SORN?

Matt Sims

Statutory off-road notification. So take the road tax off, and then at the beginning of next month tax it again.

Keith Gooden

When you do that, have you got to garage it or keep it on private property?

Matt Sims

It’s got to be on private property. It’s got to be off the road, yeah. So don’t go doing it just before you drive to Cornwall. But when you retax it, see what it becomes. But I would definitely pick up the phone and be prepared to sit on hold for an hour to try and speak to someone at DVLA. Because that’s new to me – if you upplate, the road tax becomes £165.

Keith Gooden

Baz is in Auckland. We’ve had a lot of questions from Kiwiland in the last few podcasts. “Hi. We’re looking at buying a motorhome next April and spending six months in the UK and Europe. Gas bottles are the most confusing part of the plan, and I wonder if this UK POL, to the rest of the world LPG, gas bottle refill, Autogas travel adapter kit is the answer,” an adapter kit, “Enabling us to use UK bottles everywhere.” Can you make head or tail of this one then, Matt?

Matt Sims

Wow. So Baz has sent us a link to this kit. And basically, it’s a load of LPG gas bottle adapters. It would appear that you can use it with every type of regulator and connector. Put the brakes on, Baz. Definitely don’t buy this.

It looks like this enables you to refill a Calor bottle. And that is really bad practice. I’m not sure it’s illegal, but Calor has sent people to prison for doing this. There was recently a case where there was a chap in a barn refilling six-kilo gas bottles, the Calor ones, from the larger bottles, and he had thousands of them being refilled and selling them on a black market – well, selling them on the open market. And Calor got him sentenced to jail.

So be really, really careful. Gas is dangerous. If you’re travelling around Europe, my advice is to get a refillable bottle and buy the three adapters that you need, which will cover you for all of Europe. Use Autogas refill points and stay safe.

Keith Gooden

Graham McEwan’s in Preston. “Hi, Matt. I have a campervan, which I use regularly but do not live in. I’m thinking of upgrading my battery system to lithium with solar panels and the relevant control system.”

“I’d probably choose Victron with an inverter. Or is it cheaper to just buy a portable power bank? They do look cumbersome and difficult to store. Is there one you’d recommend? Many thanks,” he says.

Matt Sims

This is a big topic, and you know what? I’ve been a year researching lithium, and I’m a long way into it, and I’ve learned an awful lot about it. I was only on the phone last night with Glenn from Lithium Pro, and we’re testing some of their batteries at the moment.

We use a lithium battery in our motorhome, and we are fitting a small inverter to it, but it will drain the battery quite quickly, even though it’s a lithium battery. I want to run my coffee machine. We also, though, do carry a power bank, a portable power bank. It’s a Poweroak one, but there are lots of brands out there.

And online at the moment, there are loads of offers from brands like Jackery, and Bluetti – there’s lots of them. And you’re going to spend somewhere around £500 to £700 for probably a 2,000-watt system. And yeah, they are big, they are heavy, they are cumbersome, but they are a lot cheaper than a full lithium installation.

And I think they provide us with convenience. We use it to recharge our e-bikes. We use it to power the coffee machine. We also use it at all the shows we go to to run our iPads and sum up machines, and we recharge them overnight.

So we can actually take it out of the van and put it on the stand during the day and it gives us 240 volts. So a portable power bank, I think, is about cost versus convenience, so that versus a lithium battery. And it might be that’s a cheaper and more affordable solution for you.

Ask Matt

Keith Gooden

So Matt, how do people get in touch and ask a question?

Matt Sims

Please do. We would love it if you did. It’s mhmp.info/askmatt.

Keith Gooden

Or you could leave us a review.

Matt Sims

You can – mhmp.info/review.

Keith Gooden

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Matt Sims

We’d love it if you did. Hit the little bell as well, and then YouTube will tell you when a new episode comes out. And our YouTube channel is brought to you by our friends at www.arobasecreative.co.uk.