Porsche Vehicle Tracking System - is it worth it?

Porsche Vehicle Tracking System - is it worth it?

Author
Discussion

Far Cough

2,234 posts

169 months

Friday 7th August 2020
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Suffolk Tony said:
Hi folks,

I've just picked up a 911, 991.1 Carrera 4S. It's a great car, but there's one little niggle; the previous owner had a tracker fitted, so when the car's ignition is turned on the display shows a yellow warning icon. Moving the info. stalk forward Makes it smaller & moves it to the bottom of the display, so it's no big deal, but apparently it can only be switched off by a Porsche dealer. Or subscribe to the tracking service, which I'm not interested in doing.

I was wondering if there's some other means of getting the blasted thing to disappear?
You could try ringing Vodafone and asking them. It could be something at their end. Maybe the car still has some subscription left over from the previous keeper. Did you get given the 2 key cards on vehicle handover and what happens if you drive the car with one in your pocket ??

dgswk

899 posts

95 months

Saturday 8th August 2020
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I'm just going into year 2 of 992 ownership.

Just been looking at the meerkat website, I'm 47, 1 accident, 3 points, 6,000 miles a year, not garaged, 90k value, 4yrs NCB, good postode.

Without tracker, best price (Admiral), £1,125, with tracker, best price (Chruchill), £558.

No brainer. If someone cares to nick it, they can take fob and the keys, I'm not going to stop them.

Fob is a bit of a PITA.

anonymous-user

55 months

Saturday 8th August 2020
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Think I’m going to take up car theft, judging by the number of people on here who’d simply hand over their keys (+fob) without a fight ...

MannyLon

1,680 posts

207 months

Saturday 8th August 2020
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Schmed said:
Think I’m going to take up car theft, judging by the number of people on here who’d simply hand over their keys (+fob) without a fight ...
Depends on the fight. If they are armed, it’s not worth it. But first they have to get passed my trusty shepherdsmile

dgswk

899 posts

95 months

Saturday 8th August 2020
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I've got two kids, and I'm only a lightly built director. Someone takes the effort to break in while occupied, well, thats what I pay insurance for, crack on chaps, do you want both sets?

No dominating the stairs here, despite having an array of Duncan Fearnley's finest at my disposal in the wardrobe lol!

blueSL

614 posts

227 months

Friday 9th October 2020
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The VTS is a major hassle. I’ve had mine go bad and on a 991, the entire centre console and dashboard has to come out to reset it. That’s £1500. Minimum. It’s now gone bad a second time and interestingly, it went bad both times when I was driving on the Isle of Skye. The dealer thinks it’s a coincidence but I’ve recently found that the rock there disturbs the operation of compasses and while I believe the VTS primarily uses GPS, it may also use a compass as backup to triangulate between Vodafone cells. It might just be that garbage results cause the software to hang up...

My understanding is that the VTS is reset by power cycling it with a magnet held to the side but there’s the small matter of getting at it.

Cheib

23,272 posts

176 months

Friday 9th October 2020
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I've had it on five cars....insurance requirements on all of them when new but not as they get older/worth less. Hope this isn't jinxing myself but never had a problem apart from batteries going flat in fobs after a year or so. It's not cheap but the system seems to work okay.

Personally on my GT3 when it's in being serviced I like being able to set speed dependent alerts etc

I wouldn't use an insurance company because they do or don't require a tracker....insurance you get what you pay for like everything else. If you can get one with good cover that meets your requirements and doesn't need a tracker then that's great.

JJH12345

1 posts

43 months

Monday 26th October 2020
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So i've just taken delivery of a stunning Porsche Cayenne Coupe, and my insurance company have mandated the tracker to be activated, which is fine.

However, has anyone seen the size of the new tracker fob?! Compared to the old thin driver cards, it's huge, in fact it's bigger than the key for the car!

My question is, i always keep my house and car key separate, so i want a pouch i can put the fob in, on my house key, has anyone got one? There's loads of products for the old driver cards, but none that fit the new one....

For reference, here's a pic of my new driver card...


bridggar1

90 posts

42 months

Tuesday 17th November 2020
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Dragging up an oldish thread - but does anyone know if you can simply lapse the PVTS (vodafone) system at the end of your contract? Insurance company doesn't seem to mandate a tracker any longer but I noted an earlier post indicating the fob warning was popping up on the dash. I don't want to pay for removal\disablement and can't get through to Vodafone to get an answer.

Oh and that new fob looks massive!

CraigV12V

304 posts

154 months

Monday 5th September 2022
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I’ve just picked a new 992 and got the large fobs shown above.

If I had known this was a fob based system I’d have passed on it and fitted a separate phone based system where the phone in essence becomes the fob.

I had a phone based system fitted to a 991 I bought second hand and whilst I did occasionally nip out for some milk and not take my phone, the reality is who doesn’t normally automatically take their phone everywhere with them….

Fobs that cannot fit in a wallet or even have a hole so you can put them on a key ring are frankly rubbish as a solution in this era of us all having phones that never leave our side.

Strange that Porsche don’t have a phone as a fob option. It’s a solution that has been around for years.


First Sea Lord

1,167 posts

180 months

Monday 5th September 2022
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CraigV12V said:
I’ve just picked a new 992 and got the large fobs shown above.

If I had known this was a fob based system I’d have passed on it and fitted a separate phone based system where the phone in essence becomes the fob.

I had a phone based system fitted to a 991 I bought second hand and whilst I did occasionally nip out for some milk and not take my phone, the reality is who doesn’t normally automatically take their phone everywhere with them….

Fobs that cannot fit in a wallet or even have a hole so you can put them on a key ring are frankly rubbish as a solution in this era of us all having phones that never leave our side.

Strange that Porsche don’t have a phone as a fob option. It’s a solution that has been around for years.
I've always used a different tracker company due to the fobs.

zz top

534 posts

246 months

Thursday 24th August 2023
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Ordered new Cayenne Coupe to be told Porsche no longer fit the PTS+ system as standard. Dealer wants £720 to fit a Vodafone VTS, the price includes one years subscription to Vodafone.

My question is:- why has a major car manufacturer stopped fitting trackers as standard when car theft is rife? Do they want more Porsche's stolen???

SV_WDC

710 posts

90 months

Thursday 24th August 2023
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My guess would be cost

JohnnyUK

761 posts

79 months

Thursday 24th August 2023
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zz top said:
Ordered new Cayenne Coupe to be told Porsche no longer fit the PTS+ system as standard. Dealer wants £720 to fit a Vodafone VTS, the price includes one years subscription to Vodafone.

My question is:- why has a major car manufacturer stopped fitting trackers as standard when car theft is rife? Do they want more Porsche's stolen???
Maybe a MY23 build car, but my incoming Macan GTS says:

"Porsche Vehicle Traking System Plus (PVTS Plus) - subscription required."

Complete with typo!

Geoff39GL

573 posts

137 months

Thursday 24th August 2023
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zz top said:
Ordered new Cayenne Coupe to be told Porsche no longer fit the PTS+ system as standard. Dealer wants £720 to fit a Vodafone VTS, the price includes one years subscription to Vodafone.

My question is:- why has a major car manufacturer stopped fitting trackers as standard when car theft is rife? Do they want more Porsche's stolen???
My understanding is that Porsche starting fitting their own instead of Vodafone and have had nothing but trouble with them, my car had a problem and was off the road for 7 weeks due to the tracker. I was told that Porsche had taken the decision not to offer a tracker.

zz top

534 posts

246 months

Thursday 24th August 2023
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JohnnyUK said:
zz top said:
Ordered new Cayenne Coupe to be told Porsche no longer fit the PTS+ system as standard. Dealer wants £720 to fit a Vodafone VTS, the price includes one years subscription to Vodafone.

My question is:- why has a major car manufacturer stopped fitting trackers as standard when car theft is rife? Do they want more Porsche's stolen???
Maybe a MY23 build car, but my incoming Macan GTS says:

"Porsche Vehicle Traking System Plus (PVTS Plus) - subscription required."

Complete with typo!
My order stated the same but when the new Cayenne was delivered to the OPC dealer last week (ready to prep for 1st September delivery) I was informed the PVTS+ was no longer fitted at the factory as a standard feature and if a tracker was required i had to order via local OPC.
My insurance company requires an S5 system, hence I've had OPC fit a Vodafone system at £720.