On Saturday night someone broke into my house, while we were asleep upstairs. The first we knew of it was when my girlfriend went downstairs to make a cup of tea and found the front door open.
We couldn’t see any sign of a forced entry and nothing appeared to be missing at first, so I couldn’t rule out the possibility of a brain fart the previous night and forgetting to shut the door, but no, thinking back I definitely remembered locking up.
Then we discovered her handbag was missing. While she got on the phone to cancel her credit cards, I went outside to see if someone had taken her wallet and dumped the bag nearby. Sure enough I could follow a trail of lipsalve, make-up, used tissues (heh, didn’t count on my gf having a monster cold, did you Mr Thief?) etc all down the road. Then I spotted a couple of magazines and CDs that I recognised as being in my work bag. Hey, I didn’t even know that was missing! Further down the street I find my bag hanging over a fencepost, and later I found the handbag thrown in someone’s front garden.
The sum total of the haul from this grand theft? One wallet containing various cards, all now cancelled, **60 pence ** in cash and a few store vouchers (for women’s clothing). One cheap mobile phone. And some keys.
In return for that meagre effort, I have had to get the door locks changed and will have to spend today trying to sort out new keys for her car. She had no spare key so is locked out of the car, so I have also had to disable the car so they can’t come out and steal it, but I can’t get into the car to take the battery out (easy option) so I had to take a wheel off. I also had to take today off work and get up extra early to give her a lift to work.
I hope you enjoy the few quid you’ll get for an old mobile and for selling the store vouchers off at half-price, idiot.
Yes, thieves are stupid and suck. They will smash a window which costs $700 to repair to steal a bubble gum dispenser with perhaps five dollars in change inside. [true story]
The bottom line is that they are @sshats and don’t care.
I’m sorry. I have a theory on bike theft and capital punishment that no one wants to hear.
It gets better. It turns out it will take up to 10 working days to get a new key for the car. So it looks like we’ll be forking out for a rental car for two weeks, too.
You have my sympathy. A day or so after my husband had a new CD player/radio put in his car, someone smashed driver’s side window and stole the player. He paid somewhere between $200 and $500 bucks for that thing, probably more on the lines of $200. He’s asleep now and I’m not waking him up. He’d just had that window tinted. We had to get the window repaired, and the thieves did over $2K in damage, all told, because they messed up the dashboard too. The thieves took one CD, as well. My husband didn’t know whether to be relieved that only one CD was taken, or insulted because they didn’t like his taste.
Colophon, I most sincerely hope that your thief/ves catch your GF’s monster cold. He/they certainlly deserve it.
You will have more than one made, right? I used to lock myself out of my car all the time. Now I have one on my keyring, a spare in my wallet, a full set well-hidden outside the house, and my brother and two friends have one as well.It may sound like overkill, but I will not be locked out of the car again.
Unfortunately not. It was bought second hand, with only one key. Well it does have a second key, but that will only open the door, not start the ignition, as it is not coded correctly. Plus it’s 50 miles away at her parents’ house :rolleyes:
One of those things we never quite got round to sorting out in the past…
Not that this is in any way intended as a criticism of you, but it’s one nice thing about having large dogs. No burglar with a self-preservation instinct is going to approach a house from which he hears three large loud barking dogs. We’ve had at least one big dog, and more ususally two or three, for the past nineteen years and ever been burgled.
With that said, I hope you can recover from that jackass’s actions as quickly as possible and that he finds a really bad fence for your phone (or even better, none at all, and gets no use from it).
I don’t undrstand. How are you going to get the ignition key made? You mentioned that it will take two weeks. Is it coming from the manufacturer? Why can’t the parents send you the door key so a locksmith can make an ignition key?
At any rate, when you get the new key, can you not have copies made?
Not sure if this is different in the UK, but in the US, cars have an assigned “key code”. A locksmith (or the manufacturer) can use this code to cut a new set of keys. Some models take a while to get. I have a friend who lost the keys to his BMW. He ended up waiting for around 3 weeks for the local BMW dealership to get a new set of keys made.
So it’s not that it’s a PITA to get a new key, it’s that it can take a while for the new keys to get to you.
They hit my house in the mountains. They stole a few things including a 30" TV that didn’t work, and were trying to get some more stuff out the door, including my projection TV. I had the cops come and dust the place, then camped across the street, knowing they would be back.
I waited there two days over the weekend. The Sherrif came and said that the neighbor saw me there and thought I was shady! I told the officer I was casing my own house, and explained the situation. He was like “whatever dude, good luck” and took off. The next day was Monday, and I had to go into town to pay a bill and go to the bank. I grabbed some food and headed back up to the house. When I got there I figured “what the heck” and drove up the driveway.
There they were, loading up the pickup with my stuff. I drove back down the driveway and parked my van across the gate. They came down, pronto, and were yelling “we didn’t do nothing mister, let us go” etc. I called the cops from a neighbor and the Sherrifs showed up and took them to jail. The three of them pleaded guilty and went to jail. One of them was a career criminal and will probably be in jail for quite some time.
I am currently installing a video surveillance system where I am living now. Mess with me and your ass is grass. The cops will take a report. You can make the criminals done and finished. I suggest all dopers with something worth protecting do the same. I got totally set up at Fry’s for like $500.
Any cop will tell you that the best way to help them is to protect yourself. Get a dog, get an alarm, get a gun. Take it back from the scum.
Someone kicked in my door once, and all that was taken was my VCR. I live on a second floor, and since the asshole was probably alone the TV was too big and awkward.
The police officer advised me not to get another VCR right away, as the creep might come back. Sure enough six days later the same thing happened. Guess there was nothing they wanted to steal, but instead they raided my refrigerator and cooked my bacon and eggs. I found grease all over, and a half eaten plate of scrambled eggs on my couch. And the jerk wasn’t satisfied with my regular dishes, they got in the back of my cupboard and got out my one good china plate to eat off of. :mad:
