So a little over a week ago, I come out to my car after work (I work as a chef in a fine dining restaurant...long days, late nights). Go to put the key in the lock and realize something's not right. The lock is pushed in. Then I notice the hole under the lock, where it seems someone wedged something in under the lock and pried. At this point I know what happened, I'm just afraid to really look inside and see what all they got. I open the door, expecting to see a total mess...
...and at first, notice nothing out of place. Glove compartment closed, center console closed (between the two, probably 15 CDs/cases total, not a good idea, I know). I look, expecting to see the mess of wires and hole in the middle of the dash from someone having ripped the stereo out. All the asshat took was the faceplate off my Pioneer CD headunit. Well, all in all, I'm relieved they didn't totally tear the dash apart or steal the whole deck. Then again, those faceplates can be expensive (relatively speaking) to replace. I ended up finding one for $40 shipped on eBay (no, it wasn't the one stolen out of my car). I figure the person(s) who broke in probably were planning to steal the whole radio, but either got scared off (the restaurant is in a small shopping plaza and there's a bar a couple storefronts down from our restaurant, it was like 12:30 or so when I left), or they realized it was going to be harded than they thought. Still, why the hell didn't they just leave the damn faceplate in the car?
Biggest concern is how much is it gonna cost to fix the door itself? I have yet to get the car to a shop to have them look at the damage, I work Tuesday through Saturday and most shops aren't going to be open on a Sunday. Plus it'll take more than a day to fix anything like this, so I have to figure out what to drive when I get it fixed. But all in all, stupid @!#$s @!#$ with your sh!t, ya know?
I think the next mod might be an alarm. Never had one before but if this happened once, I imagine it could easily happen again (and in the city of Toledo, where I work, they just recently cut a bunch of police officers, going into summer with 10%+ unemployment nonetheless). Not sure how it'll be to install one myself because I don't feel like paying someone to do it - I can install a car stereo myself so the alarm shouldn't be much harder, right? (5 speed though, any harder?)
Sorry to hear that man, bet you will take your faceplate off everytime now.
Problem with taking the faceplate off - I had one once before in a different car, and I lost the damn faceplate when I had taken it off (think it fell out of a coat pocket or something when walking across campus). But yeah, taking it off is definitely not a bad idea, as long as I can keep track of my crap...
The kinds of people that do these sort of things figure that if they cant get it they might as well wreck it
Almost as bad as when I got my radio stolen...had the faceplate off but just left it in the console. Criminals are smarter than you think he took the whole radio and faceplate...even got the case for the faceplate with it!
Brian
