One or more people has been picking away at various things on my car for weeks now and they had better hope that I never find out who they are because they will feel my wrath. It started with someone trying to pick the parking sticker off my rear window (my landlord has them affix to the outside, god knows why). Then someone tried to peel off my registration sticker. Then someone tried to steal the entire license plate, bending it all to shit and breaking the frame. Now today I see someone’s fucking with the locking cover over my gas cap. The hinged side is pulled away and out of alignment with the rest of the side panel by almost a quarter of an inch. I was able to press it back into place but now the release is messed up and it doesn’t spring away from the body when I pop it; I have to pry it with a key.
The fucking car isn’t even paid for yet. Fuckers. Keep your goddamn fucking hands off my car.
You need one of those South African cars with the built-in flame throwers. Turn the vandal into a crispy critter.
I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to have some moron screwing with your car, for no good reason. Is there any way you could setup a video camera and VCR to keep an eye on your car?
If it makes you feel better, somebody inexplicably stole my birdbath this weekend, and some person or possibly animal not-so-explicably stole the ripe tomatoes from the plant on my porch. (Actual garden tomatoes have been unharmed.) I can understand trying to take a license plate a whole lot easier than a bird bath.
If it makes you feel any better, my tomatoes seem to be suffering from some kind of blight. (You could fling them randomly at other tennants just to put the word out that your not one to be farked with.)
At the apt complex next to the condos I jsut finished, I noticed that someone on the 3rd floor had set up one of those little webcan thingies to the balcony railing, pointing out to the parking lot. A wire trailed back in to the unit…
When I happened to see the guy who lived there out on his balcony one day I was working late, I asked him about it. He explained that he trying to catch whoever was doing the petty vandalism on residents’ cars. He said that photogaphic evidence was the same as a cop catching them in the act. And since the line between felony and misdemeanor in OK is so low, he figures he’ll eventually see the culprit in jail.
Don’t know if he was correct in his statements or was simply assuming, but maybe you can check out something like that in regards to the Ottomobile.*
If the OP is living at a complex, as seems the case, all this should be reported to the management company, and enventually to the police. At the very least, let some of neighbors know about it since it is likely that other residents may be having the same things done to them. Chances are little will be done if only one person complains, but if it gets around publically that several attempted break-ins have occurred in a short space of time, the management will take steps to control it rather than possibly lose occupancy as a result.
The complex I live in, normally a pretty benign area, had a few daytime break-ins. The management not only got the cops to step up patrols, the police even parked a spare patrol car near the entrance on and off for several months just to make it look like a cop actually lived on the property. While simple an obvious, it seemed to work.
I’ve been thinking about ways to stop the ‘bad touching’/interfering with cars that goes on and apart from survelance videos already mentioned, I was wondering if those car covers may be a deterant. If you have to remove the cover to mess with the car, it may be more noticeable or bothersome??
I had a neighbor who thought it would be funny to go out every morning and open the door to my gas tank (the cap itself is locked). She stopped really quick when she found out I had contacted the police – at the time, her car was uninsured and a month overdue for an inspection, and she didn’t have the money to pay for either.
I think this is what would piss me off the most. If some crackhead is going to go out and actively seek a license plate to paste on a stolen car, HAVE THE FUCKING DECENCY TO BRING A FUCKING SCREWDRIVER, ASSHOLE!!!.
I hate vandals (well, the tribe was OK. There, got that reference out of the way).
Over 3 years ago some fucker pulled a hit-and-run on my car. While it was parked in my fucking driveway! I’m literally as pissed off today as I was that day. I still hang onto a thread of hope I’ll someday find out who it was. My dream is some guilt-ridden person delivering a new Porsche to make up for it, just so I can use the car to run him over.
Hoping the best for ya Otto. And forget the car cover. That will be the night the thief remembers the screwdriver and just cuts through it.
Last month, my husband got the windows of his car tinted, and then had a new CD player installed. The next morning, he went out and found that someone had smashed in the driver’s side window and taken the CD player, almost completely destroying the dashboard as well. It wasn’t even a very good player, it only cost about $200 or so, but the damage to the car was around $3K. He got his car back last week. Let me tell you, he is STEAMED. He hadn’t even used the car to commute before it was broken into. He had carefully thought out what he wanted for his anniversary and Father’s Day presents, and was looking forward to a more relaxing commute.
We don’t know who did it, we don’t even have any suspicions. It’s likely that the thief will get away with it, which is what really burns Bill up.
Lynn, have Bill shoot me an email. We can be the founding partners in The National Organization of Pissed Off Victims of Vehicular Vandalism[sup]TM[/sup].
See, we’d be a national orginization so we can hold tax-exempt fundraisers to set up a foundation to cover the costs of losses. Shit, every other microgroup in the US has an organization, this seems just as legit.
Plus, we’d label ourselves victims. That’s gotta be good for a mention on Oprah or People magazine.
In 2004, my car got broken into. Some asswipe used a blowtorch to break one of the windows, and stole my CDs and my stereo (like Lynn’s husband’s stereo, it wasn’t even an expensive stereo, and the CDs didn’t have their cases with them). I ended up with $2500 in damage to my car :mad:
A couple of years ago some asshole broke my drivers side window in an attempt to remove my stereo. Must’ve gotten interrupted because he didn’t get any farther than taking the faceplate off and removing the dashboard where the stereo mounts.
What really pissed me off is that three of the doors on that van had broken locks. They could have just opened the passenger side door rather than break the window.
They broke the faceplate to the CD player trying to get it out so after that I had to jam something in there to get it to connect and play.
I’m always worried something similar is going to happen with my new van.
I have a Tracker soft-top; I had to replace one of the side panels because it looked like the previous owner was broken into by means of a mat knife & a jackhammer, judging by the state of the dashboard around where the stereo used to be. I installed a cheapee JVC CD/head unit & invested $40 for a self-installed Bulldog alarm. Works pretty good, too, for what it’s worth. Sometimes it gives false reports, but a couple of times I’ve heard it sound & seen someone walking quickly away from the vehicle. I doubt if it would deter a determined vandal, but casual loiterers it seems to work for.
Thank Hod for nosey neighbours … my car was partially crushed while peacefully sitting in the driveway by a schoolbus, using our drive to turn around in (at the time, in the place where I was living, we shared a double-wide drive with the neighbours). The bus driver got out, looked at the damage, then got in and was about to drive off when he spotted our neighbour writing down his licence number … as a result of that timely action, our insurance was forced to pay up.
The insurer’s appraisal was that the cost to fix the damage was more than the old crate was worth, so they basically paid its value. We bought the car back from them for its salvage value, took it to our mechanic, and fixed it - and were left with a surplus of around $800 after paying him. Car lasted a couple more years before expiring peacefully in its sleep of old age.
So we came out ahead (except for the irritation of being carless for a while). Our neighbour got a really good, expensive bottle of wine and some flowers as a token of appreciation.
