Appliance thieves go to town in Toronto

February 14th, 2012

A spate of appliance thefts from high-end homes in Toronto (Canada) have prompted a real estate board to issue a warning to home owners.

Three large-scale thefts in six months have robbed homes of their premium household appliances. The most recent, in the affluent suburb of Bayview, had $50,000 in appliances stolen including a refrigerator, a stove and a washing machine.

The high-end heists have been targeting vacant houses, usually for sale.

This has also been the case south of the border in the United States where two months ago two brothers were arrested for stealing $100,000 worth of high-end appliances from a number of homes.

Stop purloiners pinching your oven!

Do Australians need to worry about having their appliances stolen?

On occasion this happens in Australia, too.

Last year in Sydney’s Northern Beaches a series of thefts were reported where homes under construction were being targeted for their appliances. Same story for Ballarat a few years ago.

To reduce the chance of this happening Police recommend that home owners move into their houses the same day appliances are installed.

They also recommend people mark and list household goods such as appliances and electrical devices. This helps the authorities determine if an item has been stolen and its return to the rightful owner.

Nor has Australia been immune to appliance thefts in a commercial context. An Australian appliance and electrical retailer had $40,000 worth of goods pinched in the latter half of last year. In a separate case, $250,000 worth of Toshiba laptops were stolen from a factory in Sydney.

Keri Algar

Having once had to sit on the washing machine to stop it from bouncing into oblivion, Keri is today delighted with the new (smoother running) technologies that make housework easier every day. A self-confessed lazy-bones, Keri seeks out quirky inventions that ease the human workload, such as the robotic vacuum cleaner (wow). And as soon as someone figures out a Jetsons-like self-cleaning house, she will happily lay her pen to rest and retire from appliance journalism. Until then, her pick is a fridge that will tell her smartphone when it's time to pick up more beer on the way home. Magic.