Robbing Bastards

Returning to an NCP car park on Friday night, after a pleasant evening at the cinema, I got in my car and was puzzled to see a pile of rubbish in the passenger footwell.  I don’t usually keep the tidiest of cars, but I couldn’t remember it being that messy.  It was only then that I realised that the car stereo was missing.  So was my sat nav.  Robbing bastards.

You’d think my first reaction would be to feel violated or angry, but it was generally more shocked and a bit miffed.  I’m quite sanguine about the items that were stolen.  They really are just stuff.  I was much more bothered about the hassle of it all.  What was I supposed to do? Did I need to ring the police?  I wondered whether it was really worth it.  Would they actually be able to do anything?  It’s not likely that I’d claim on my insurance due to the excess combined with the loss of my no claims bonus.  Would it be worth it?

I eventually phoned them because I feared that if I didn’t register the crime then I’d become a victim of some kind of identity theft and not have any evidence of it.  Luckily, the police were very helpful, although clearly they have no chance of catching the arseholes that did it.  The police even phoned me to tell me that they were slightly delayed in coming to me, and then turned up 10 minutes later anyway.  They were supposed to call me back yesterday with an incident number, and didn’t, but other than that they were great.  The man who worked for NCP was also very helpful, so thanks to him too.

I was in the car park for 4 hours and was charged a whopping £8.80, so I’m hoping that there was some CCTV as part of the deal.  Surely some part of the exorbitant fee should be spent on security.  I’ve also got to phone their head office tomorrow to claim a refund for my parking fee.  I’d hope that I was insured for my lost goods as part of the deal, but I somehow doubt it.  I’ll let you know.

The irony is that I asked some friends the best place to park in the area and they said that I’d probably find somewhere in the street nearby.  I had a quick look, but, because I was running late, I ended up going for the official parking solution.  Just look where that got me.

UPDATE:

Well, just 20 minutes after I posted this the police gave me a call to provide me with a crime number.  He was very apologetic about not calling yesterday, which was fair enough.  Apparently the car park only has cameras on the entrance and exit, and so the thieves have unsurprisingly worked out how not to be spotted on them.  There’s not a great deal more the police can do, but given the nature of the crime, it’s hardly surprising and I don’t hold it against them.  Perhaps NCP should have a few more cameras on-site, though.  Since you tend to only ever hear negative opinions of the police, it’s nice to have a positive experience to report in how they dealt with me.  Although there was a great deal they could do to retrieve my property, I at least felt like they were bothered about what had happened.  I would have preferred not to have been robbed at all, though.