Totally off topic - beware of ground floor rooms in the Caribbean

Been a while since I was about, formally VC but lost my password and couldn't get it re-set.

Went to Barbados in October nice ground floor ocean view but on the evening of day 6 whilst at dinner, our room was broken into and the safe was physically stolen!! Thieves had used a concrete slab to smash it off the wall and took the whole thing!

Luckily we got everything back bar the cash and some earrings but left stranded with cancelled credit cards and no means of doing anything. Via the British Consulate, British Airways kindly transferred our non transferable flight free off charge and we came home 5 days early.

We are very well travelled so this was a huge shock but don't want anyone else to go through the hell we did. Please don't have a ground floor room in the Caribbean. It is a fairly new method in Barbados but the police told us it was quite common in Antigua.

Still doing battle with the insurance company two and a half months on!! Apparently using a safe to protect your valuables may not be the right thing to do!

Was warned about similar problems in apartments in Lanzarote several years ago, In one apartment I found the safe was in a cupboard that had an easily removed plywood panel backing it, the other side was a service store that was unlocked on its outside. on closer examination the safe had bolts from the inside cavity.................... but wasn't actually bolted down (no nuts on the ends of the bolts!) so could easily be lifted straight off the shelf it was supposed to be securely mounted on. A "scam" was suspected and fellow residents checked their safe and found them to be mounted exactly the same way - the owners of the apartments were advised but weren't interested, suspicion of the other guests was that they were in on the game.

This one was bolted to the wall inside the wardrobe hence the need of a slab was they took from our patio area. Police took nearly 2 hours to arrive but were good when they got going. The safe was smashed on the side with a rock until the door popped open. To be honest we were very lucky to get back what we did including my Evoque keys along with the parking ticket at Gatwick.

We'll definitely never accept a ground floor room ever again.