I couldn’t. By the time I needed the answer, it was already gone.
Markus B. and +12,000 protected customers
You're reading this on a phone that cost you a few hundred euros.
It has a case on it, doesn't it?
Probably a screen protector too.
You didn't agonise over either of them. You bought the phone and you bought the case in the same ten minutes, because obviously you did.
Now look at the rest of what you carry.
The bag you take absolutely everywhere. The bike you leave outside shops. The wallet that's on you every single day of your life. The suitcase you hand to a stranger at an airport and then walk away from.
What's protecting any of those?
Nothing. Not one of them.
Think about what that actually means for a second.
You protected the item that is insured, replaceable, backed up, and findable from your laptop in about four seconds.
And the ones that are none of those things? You left them with nothing at all.
So why?
Not because you don't care. You put a case on a phone you'd replace in a day.
It's because a case is for dropping — and you can picture dropping something. You've done it. It's real to you.
Theft isn't real to you. It's a thing that happens in stories, to other people, in other cities.
Right up until the afternoon it isn't.
And you did it again this week without thinking about it once.
You locked it outside a shop and walked in.
Or left it in the boot of the car while you popped inside somewhere.
Or put it on a belt and watched it disappear through the rubber flaps.
Or slid it onto the rack at the end of a carriage and sat down four rows away.
Now imagine one of those was the last time you ever saw it.
Not "might be gone." Gone. You're standing there and it isn't.
And somebody asks you one question:
Where is it right now?
Not where it was. Where it is, at this second, while you're standing there.
You can't answer that.
Nobody can.
And that — not the theft, not the money — is the actual problem.
I know it's the entire thing, because I've been asked it.
My bag went from the boot of a car at a motorway service station, in the eleven minutes it took my wife to buy two coffees. No broken glass. No noise. I didn't even notice until we were fifty kilometres down the road.
At the police station they were kind. They're always kind, that's the thing nobody tells you.
He asked one question.
"Was there any tracking on it?"
I said no.
And he did this small nod. Not judgemental.
Just closing a door.
"Then there's realistically nothing for us to act on."
Here's why I'm telling you this instead of the rest of the story.
Answer his question yourself. Right now, sitting where you are.
Whichever of the four came into your head at the top of this page — if it went tonight, and a tired man in a small room asked you that, what would you say?
You'd say no.
And then you'd sit in that chair and watch the same door close.
Everyone who owns one of these bought it after hearing that question.
You're reading this before.
That's the only advantage that exists in this entire article.
This was the other thing I'd got wrong.
Most of these are designed to be seen. A white plastic disc with a logo, clipped to the outside of a bag.
Whoever takes your bag knows exactly what that is. Checking is the first thing they do.
Some of them will even notify him that he's being followed — so he has time to drop it in a bin.
A category of product that announces itself to the one person it's meant to be hidden from.
The one I ended up with is matte black, about the size of a coin, and goes inside things.
One purchase. In a multipack. Nothing per month.
Which is the only reason the maths finally worked, and I did all four instead of one.
Four things. Four different places it disappears into.
Find yours.
That's the part that should bother you, because it's the part that bothers me.
I'd just lost a bag. If anyone was going to sort this out immediately it was me.
I did nothing for three months, and I know exactly why.
Because it's never one thing you want to protect.
It's the bike, the wallet, the bag with the laptop in it, and the suitcase that goes on the plane.
Four things.
And every option I found wanted paying twice — once for the device, then every month afterwards, forever. Four items, four subscriptions, indefinitely, for things I hoped would never happen.
Rent, on plastic I'd already bought.
So I closed the laptop and did nothing.
That's why almost nobody is protected. It isn't carelessness. The maths was made impossible on purpose.
Not clipped to the frame, where it can be seen and thumbed off in four seconds.where somebody would have to be looking for it to find it.
A lock buys you time. It has never bought anybody safety.
Flat in the note compartment. You stop noticing it by the second day.
Cards get blocked in four minutes. That was never the problem.
It's the ID. The keys. The days you lose replacing things that only exist on paper.
A wallet that's somewhere is a wallet you can point at. A wallet that's nowhere costs you a week.
Under the padding, in the laptop sleeve.
Nobody takes a backpack for the backpack.
And some of what's on that laptop isn't replaceable with money at all. The photos you keep meaning to back up on Sunday.
This is the one I'd fit first if you only ever do one.
In the lining, before you zip it.
Theft is rare on a flight. Luggage going somewhere you aren't is not.
This is the one nobody buys it for.
It's also the one they end up using.
I assumed what happened to me was rare. A bad afternoon. Wrong car park, wrong eleven minutes.
It isn't rare. And that isn't even the part that got me.
In Germany alone, 214,300 bicycle thefts were reported to police last year.
Worldwide, airlines mishandled 24 million suitcases.
Big, frightening numbers.
And they are still not the point.
This is the point.
Of all those reported bike thefts, police solved 11.5%.
For pickpocketing, it's 6.9%.
Read that one again.
Out of every hundred people who have a wallet taken, ninety-three never see it again.
Not because the police don't care. I've told you how kind they were.
Because there is nothing to go on.
No location. No lead. No case.
Theft isn't really the risk. The risk is the hour afterwards — and right now, for you, nothing happens in that hour at all.
There's one more figure, and it's the one that actually made me buy something.
Bike theft in Germany fell by 13% last year.
Germany's federal police put that down to better security — good locks, and trackers.
So it does work.
It just only works for the people who did something first.
In April our suitcase didn't come out at the carousel.
You know the routine. Somebody apologetic tells you it's "in the system."
Except I could see it. Still in Lisbon, where we'd flown from.
I said so out loud at the desk, with the screen turned round.
Nobody ran anywhere. A note, a phone call, and the bag was at our house the next afternoon.
That's the whole payoff, and it's the most boring paragraph on this page.
But it's the exact thing that was missing in that police station.
I could answer the question.
You lock your front door every day without once thinking of yourself as a fearful person.
There's a smoke alarm above your head that has done absolutely nothing for years.
Same category of object. Cheap. Invisible. Pointless — right up until the afternoon it isn't.
And that thing that came into your head at the top of this page? You're going to leave it somewhere this week. You already know where.
The only thing you get to choose is whether you can answer the question when somebody asks it.
Real stories from customers who use WAYYPINN every day.
Finally, tracking without another subscription
I wanted trackers for my bike, backpack, wallet and suitcase, but refused to pay four monthly fees. One multipack solved everything. Setup was quick, and now I can check all four whenever I need to.
Small enough to stay hidden
I was worried a tracker would be obvious, but these disappear inside my belongings. One sits flat in my wallet, another is hidden in my backpack, and the bike tracker can’t be spotted unless you know where to look.
Already helped with lost luggage
Our suitcase never appeared at baggage reclaim. While the airline could only say it was ‘in the system’, I could see it was still at our departure airport. That information helped get it returned the next day.
Peace of mind without feeling paranoid
I don’t constantly check the app, and that’s exactly the point. The trackers stay out of sight until something goes missing. Knowing I can find my belongings if needed makes travelling and commuting much less stressful.
The multipack made sense
I originally wanted one for my bike. Once I realised I could protect my wallet, work bag and suitcase too, the multipack became the obvious choice. No subscriptions, no separate orders, no complicated setup.
Wish I had bought them sooner
I once had a backpack stolen and could give the police nothing beyond where I last saw it. That helpless feeling stayed with me. Now my important belongings have trackers inside them, so at least I can answer the most important question: where are they?
For the next 72 hours:
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