Portugal Day 6: did not go as planned

 

Well, this most certainly changed our plans... Our car was vandalized on a parking lot in Leiria in the most petty of possible ways.

Missing: driver side molding for driver and rear passenger doors for Renault Kadjar.

That's our car in the parking lot of a shopping mall/city market in Leiria. We got there around 1pm, went to check out the weekly market at the stadium nearby, then from there went to see the castle, went down to the central part of town, walked for a bit before returning to the car shortly after 4pm. 

The parking lot was occupied by the gang running the same racket as in the Sitio of Nazarre yesterday, and we did (argh) give a guy his euro, but apparently the rental car sticker on the back (the stupidest thing a rental car company can do is paint a target on the car) was sufficiently attractive that of the hundreds of cars on that lot, only ours lost external parts.  I spent some time yelling in vain at the last remaining guy from the gang on the parking lot, he of course pretended he had no idea who done it. We called police, went up to the police station (which is in a really showy historic building directly below the castle - we passed it on our way out of the castle) and had an officer on duty produce a report. The entire proceeding made it clear that this report is for us to show to the rental car company, and that no one is going to bother looking for anything, despite the fact that (a) one camera pointing at the parking lot would have recorded the entire proceeding (or deterred this from happening), and (b) it is really not that hard  to figure out whodoneit, as I am assuming the gang that operates in that lot consists of people known to the police - or at least, if anyone with any skill was running the police department, it would. The officer on duty suggested that we got marked for being tourists (duh) and someone was following us out of the parking lot to signal back when we were no longer in danger of returning to the car quickly (makes sense). 

The part that makes it so petty and ridiculous is that we looked up the prices on the parts they took - they go for $50 - $80 from third parties (Renault strangely does not have a good parts catalog on-line in which I could look up the exact part - even after we discovered the official name - but my guess is - no more than double for official part).  Installation should be pretty straightforward - pull the car up, screw in the molding - so, if  I were doing it to my car - $150 parts + 1 hour labor (charitable - that actual installation is probably more like 15-20 minutes), so somewhere around $250-300 in a shop.  

The officer said that this is the first time they had a report like this (a typical steal is a catalytic converter). This suggests that there is a channel for off-loading car parts, and there is an organized effort to jack whatever parts stick out.  It's just that doing so in a VERY BUSY parking lot in the middle of the day in a tourist city is kind of ridiculous.  

Yep, we are tourists, we don't quite blend, we don't speak Portuguese, etc. etc... But expecting a parking lot in the middle of a tourist city to be reasonably safe is NOT unreasonable, even if one walks in a "punch me I am a tourist" t-shirt.

So yeah...  We did get to enjoy the day before  we learned this happened, but I don't have the mental energy to go through that at the moment  - will do a separate post on this day later.

We still need to deal with reporting it (took about an hour and seven different phones to get to a point where someone took a report, promised to call us back and did not), and then filing an insurance claim with our broker...

Steps:  17162.

Tomorrow:  moving to Porto. Plans depend on whether anyone from the rental car company bothers to call us back.