WARNING!! Long, Mindless rant mixed with a sprinkle of profanity

Ah, beautiful Brooklyn NY. What a wonderful city. I left my spacious studio basement apartment at 7AM this morning, to find someone had been gracious enough to give me a surprise.

Both stock 17" wheels/rims on the driver side of the car were gone. The car was lazily perched atop a single Concrete cinder block, warping the bottom rubber lip awkwardly without a care in the world... Of these wonderful people, they were so courteous as to leave all the lug nuts in a neat pile in front of where the wheels would have been. As I slowly leaned back and looked up towards the sky, savoring the fall of the white fluffy snow - one thought came to my mind.

Those godaam m@ther f$@R, piece of $hit, sorry excuse for a wad of $PERM!!!

I am so f*n pissed right now. I called up my local Honda dealer (plaza Honda, or in this case - David at the body shop) and followed their advise on filing a police report first. After waiting in the cold for 45 minutes for NYs finest, I decided to leave a note on my car and thaw my ass out in-doors. Luckily for me, this happy incident happened a few doors down from my apartment.

The police came, took my information and had me fill out some paper for the report I suppose. I am advised to call the precinct tomorrow to get a "complaint" number.

I called progressive next. They are my insurance company. They gave me a claim number which I referred to the dealer. He gave me the number for a towing company they use called Ridge Towing. The guys running the tow trucks are incredible but the boss...that’s another story.

I call Ridge towing from my cell, the guy shouts into my ear WHA!! WHA! I can’t HEAR you!! HALLOO!! I told him that is rude, and eventually got him to request a tow truck out to me.

The TOW truck apparently did a sweep of my car and I got a friendly call back from the boss. It went something like this:

Hello!!!
yes...
are you the one with the Honda fit!!!
yes...
The one with the 2 missing wheels!!!
yes...
well, you didn’t mention that!! Now my guys gotta go to the dealer, get a temp wheel and come back.
um..ok

Ok.. True, I neglected to tell them that, but you’d think they have some formal questions they are supposed to ask before they send out there trucks. On a side note, I find out the boss is deaf in both ears and quite crusty.

Anyway, back on topic. Tow truck came, we put the tires on. Loaded the car on the truck via some sort of front end loader. And had the car towed on 2 tires to the dealer.

The dealer looked over the vehicle and gave me some papers to sign. He advised me to get a rental since the car may be in the shop until the end of next week. I stuffed the papers and went next door for a car rental at all wheel rent a car.

There is one receptionist who runs the show. She is quite nice. She is arranging the payments to bill directly to the insurance company. She couldn't get a hold of anyone but lent me that car anyways saying shell work it out with the insurance. I put down 100 for the lien.

She then had some young antsy gentleman show me to car. They guy was really trying to rush me and was quite annoying. He tells me to inspect the car and sing a paper. I point out many things and he rolls his eyes and point to the paper showing it’s already listed.

I take the keys and snap pictures of anything else I notice...

My insurance company calls me saying they got the message about the rental car and gave the Rental instructions how to bill them. They will be sending an inspector down WITHIN 24 hours to look over the vehicle and assess the damage themselves. She told me it would have been better if they were contacted before the vehicle was moved...

so, now I wait... Thank you for anyone who took the time to sit through my tirade.

 

If you canb, you can get a set of steelies and tires + some decent rims and tires for the dealer cost of replacement on 2 wheels which is about $1600. My whole set ran $3300 from the dealer, thanlfully I had insurance and only payed $100 out of pocket.

I had mine jacked in the fall

 

shitty deal man. hope it all works out for you. my motor blew in my fit back in august, and i had a pain in the ass deal with the dealership, the insurance company, and the tow truck drivers too. it just all seems to set you off.....no one seems to know what they are doing, and its just unorganized. best of luck!

 

anytime you have to deal with a dealership, insurance and a tow company is never a good time. someone is bound to be an ass and make things difficult.

 

agreed.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Currently its an ice storm here in brooklyn. they are expecting intermittent snow for the next 2 days or so. luckily for me i have a rental from the dealership with front wheel drive, and my shovel and scraper are tucked safely away in my honda fit back..at...the....wait a minute... DOH!!

100 is dirt cheap. you must be paying a fortune on insurance.

 

Hi. Sorry for your troubles. You write a very good story. I felt your pain. Did you have wheels locks?

 

I have a $0 comprehensive deductible. In low theft areas (read: NOT BROOKLYN) it's usually only about $4-$10 more a month to go from a $500 deductible to a $0 deductible.

Hopefully once everything is said and done you come out ahead with some aftermarket rims (2 oem costs the same as 4 aftermarket).

 

Thanks man. no, unfortunately I did not have wheel locks. After reading some of the horror stories on the forum, I'm skeptical if they really do the trick.

 

curious? When i filed the police report, the officer told me to call in next day for a complaint number. I don't recall getting a copy of the report from him other than a phone number to the precinct?

I would have expected to get some sort of reference number or a copy. Is this the normal process?

 

Sorry to hear about your troubles.. it really sucks...

Regarding wheel locks, after reading lots of stories on the forum, I came to the conclusion that wheel locks alone will only protect you, say 30% from opportunity thieves who only steal wheels without locks. But those bad guys with brute force may just use a hammer to force the wheel locks to open.

If you install a impact sensor alarm, that may increase your protection to roughly 90% because they cannot use a hammer. The other 10% of professional thieves can open your wheel locks with duplicates of master keys.

Unless if you install a tilt sensor alarm, only then , I think the protection will increase to almost 100% because thieves with duplicate or master keys that can open your wheel locks will set off the tilt alarm

The point is how much we, FIT owners, have to spend to protect our FITs... those silly thugs

The above % are just my personal opinion and I am sure others may disagree and have other ideas

 

you're right to be skeptical...they wouldn't have helped since anyone can buy them from the dealer. The bottom line is if someone really wants your wheels they're going to get them. I would suggest a good alarm that has good vibration sensing features. You could also do like a friend of mine and have 4 separate lugnut sets but that can get expensive and you have to deal with 4 different lugnut keys!

 

Nothing will prevent a skilled (or insanely determined) thief from taking what they want off of your car. wheel locks are realistically not a "prevention mechanism" but more of a deterrent. They will take most all thieves longer to get a wheel off than a standard lug as most thieves are not likely carrying around with them a set of wheel locks for different types of cars. Time is their enemy and increasing the amount of time it takes for them to get the wheels off will make most thieves think twice before attempting.

In the OP's case, since they took only two wheels, it was likely a Grab & Go amateur theft and wheel likes would have likely done the job.

Wheel locks are worthwhile and will likely address the majority of individuals' wheel theft concerns. I've had locks on every vehicle I've owned and never had a wheel stolen. This could be coincidence or it could have been because of the wheel locks. I know for a fact someone tried to break in to my Integra GS-R as I had some driver's window & window frame damage. They didn't get the car, or the wheels.

OP, what wheels did you have on the car. you state the Stock 17". were they upgraded MUGENs? (OEM Sport are 16")

~SB

 

My mistake, they are 16". not mugen, they came with the car.

 

UPDATE:
Rental car unusable due to massive snow in.
No activity moving on my claim yet since it was submitted yesterday at 7:30AM
Unable to reach 63rd precinct all day for the complaint number.

Ok, so today I was fortunate enough to get a lift from my friend.
He has a 4 wheel drive Toyota RAV4. Took him 2 hours to get the car on the road but we were able to eventually get to work.


It was pretty bad out. We got about 2 feet of snow today. I tried as best as I could to shovel out the rental, but no luck. Arms feel like they are on fire. I'm definitely starting to regret the rental. It’s a front wheel drive Chevy cobalt.


I called the precinct several times today for the complaint number. Every time I called up I was told to call back in 30 minutes because no one was available. On what seemed like the 5th try, I got someone who tried to help me out. He took down my info and he said he would look into it. It turns out you don’t need any special reference number or anything; just your name should suffice.

And now, I wait.

 

Ok, I finally got the complaint number from the precinct. I asked the officer what i'm supposed to do with it. She told me I could use it as a tax deduction. I have no clue what the means or how to that, but at least that step is complete.

I called progressive today to find out about the claim. I must say, they seem to be very efficient. They went down today and quoted me $2500. They already wrote out a check for 1500 for the body shop. I will pay the 1g down after the repairs.

The dealership tells me the parts have already been ordered. The damage was more than the wheels it seems. I should have my baby back by Wednesday. The dealership will call me Tuesday with an update.

 

ahhh... Brooklyn... I had it all. From a popped side mirrors, broken glass, ripped headunit, slashed tires, stolen car and lots of alternate parking tickets. I'm glad I left.

Which part of Bklyn you from?

 

No, I had them put on the cheaper set of tires that come stock, so my $500 deductible turned into a $100.

 

don't forget the wheel locks this time around. Especially since you've been hit once.

Won't stop a thief but he'll probably just go for your neighbor's unlocked wheels instead.

 

Uhm... yes.

My solution... go with steel wheels and hub caps.

Who wants those bad enough to steal them? ...thats right no one!

 

I asked the body shop if they can get those for me. He told me no problem, no additional charge.

Flatbush or more specifically, the nostrand avenue area.
Yeah, I can’t stand this place. If I had the option I would have moved out long ago. Only thing preventing me from moving is that jobs are easier to come by here and my funds could use improvement. Just out of curiosity, where did you move to and did all that stuff happen to the same car?