The pain of owning a nice Audi :(

[777GE90]

I bought my B8.5 several months ago, it was a huge upgrade from my previous first car, a 12 year old VW Polo.
I used to do 100 miles a day in the Polo and although it was a extremely reliable car, there were many issues with it when you start doing motorway driving in it. For example, the AC didn't work, it didn't have enough power to overtake easily and generally cruising at motorway speeds had the car at stupid RPM's like 3700 and above so fuel economy was not great either.

So that's why I decided to save up and buy the Audi, I worked so hard it and really looked forward to upgrading. Since I've had the car, I absolutely love it and it's everything I expected from it. But owning it has created a new problem that I have never had with motoring before and it really makes me upset and want to sell the car.

The problem is people.

I remember from the first week I had the car someone decided to bump their red car into my rear bumper whilst trying to parallel park behind it and for the honor they got out and put a nice little scratch on the rear wing of my car too, before driving off. Only to leave me to come back to my parked car with the red paint contact on my rear bumper and the scratch. I was parked on a raised curve with plenty of space in front and behind my car for about 20 minutes and had been parking there in my previous polo for years. Yet when I get a fancy new car this happens to me within one week.

It made me really paranoid and upset, I worked so hard to get that car and now it seems no one wants to respect my property. I never had this issue with my polo and frankly would not have cared if someone scratched it or hit it lightly.

I was so paranoid after that incident that I spent the whole day constantly going up to my house window to watch the car parked on the driveway to make sure no one else will damage it. Every time kids went by on their bikes I would have to run up to the window to make sure they don't accidentally bump into my car.

That soon wore off and I stopped being paranoid, but it changed me. I no longer park as close to the entrance of a supermarket, my car is parked far back where no one else wants to park, because some people don't care and just whack open their doors into your vehicle if you are parked beside them in the tight supermarket bays. I have never parked back in the spot where the red car driver hit my car and scratched it too.

But then things got worse, someone decided that they will start putting small scratches on my left rear door once every week or two. I noticed these scratches because I was paranoid from the first incident so I would do a full inspection of my car every 3-5 days.

The thing is, I am a very busy and modest person. I only park my car in two places mostly, either in my secure office car park or on my drive way. I don't have any enemies that I am aware of and have absolutely NO IDEA who is scratching my car.

But yesterday they took things to a whole new level, instead of the smaller and more faint scratches, they decided to do a REALLY deep scratch that is over a foot long and covers 3/4 of the door panel.

So now I have someone who has for some reason decided they will start scratching my car every 2 weeks or so and done a proper job. There could have only been two places where my car was parked when it happened, either at the office or my driveway.

I don't know who did it or why they did it, but it makes me really upset and I am not sure where to go from here. Is this the pains you have to go through for owning a nice car? How do you guys cope with it?

 

[glenandem]

We park on the furthest part of the car park at supermarkets etc and with nobody around and Sod’s law we will come back and someone will always be next to us even with a half empty car park!!
Park on the moon!!!

 

[arad85]

Grrr.... People are right....

If you want to catch who it is, best thing is to get some video evidence. Look for a dashcam that either has a battery and will run for 12+hours or will run whilst the engine is off and wire it in to capture the person doing the damage. I doubt the police will do much for a small amount of criminal damage, but you might be able to get them to go around there to say "we know it's you"... and that might be enough.

Without being too negative, if the damage is getting worse, it may well get worse again.

 

[scotty76]

We park on the furthest part of the car park at supermarkets etc and with nobody around and Sod’s law we will come back and someone will always be next to us even with a half empty car park!!
Park on the moon!!!

This happens to me all the time, people are such sheep!

Sorry to hear your tale of woe @777GE90 all the damage to my car has been self inflicted apart from one door dent which was a car park wound. Is there anywhere you could place a cheap camera to watch the car? House window?

 

[777GE90]

Thank you guys for your comments, I really want to go the camera route but my biggest problem is I don't know where to put the camera or where the damage is happening. If I put it in the car, I'm not sure the camera will cover the back left door where the person keeps putting the scratches. I want to install a home camera system too but I feel if I do all this and it does put the person off doing it again I may never catch them.

I want some sort of discrete camera and I want to be able to catch the person who is doing this to me, so I can confront them and give them a choice to accept the repair invoice or face criminal damage report to the police, who I hope will prosecute.

 

[RAF_S7]

The best solution is a front and rear camera. These have quite wide fields of view, so would hopefully catch anyone walking up to/from the car.

 

[V6_Man]

What @RAF_S7 said ^^^

All the best buddy I am sure you’ll find the culprit and the pain will be over soon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[arad85]

What front/rear won't capture is them actually doing the damage. You want something pointing at the window on the door that is being damaged. Preferably down low enough so you can capture face.

EDIT: perhaps something mounted on the rear air vent pointed up and as invisible as you can get it.

 

[beemerboy9]

Thank you guys for your comments, I really want to go the camera route but my biggest problem is I don't know where to put the camera or where the damage is happening. If I put it in the car, I'm not sure the camera will cover the back left door where the person keeps putting the scratches. I want to install a home camera system too but I feel if I do all this and it does put the person off doing it again I may never catch them.

I want some sort of discrete camera and I want to be able to catch the person who is doing this to me, so I can confront them and give them a choice to accept the repair invoice or face criminal damage report to the police, who I hope will prosecute.

He/she won't have any money - and may be scratching other cars. It's criminal damage and he/she will have to be prosecuted. Camera is the answer or wrap the whole car in plastic film- as one Aston owner did after it was vandalised on the first day of ownership.

 

[GAS MONKEY]

I feel your pain , always park furthest away from the rest of cars in the retail park, to come back to the car to find some shed parked so close to drivers door it's unbelievable

 

[DieselJake]

Sorry to hear about this, I'm quite often tempted to get a battered old zero fu*ks given car.

I guess the whole camera thing should definitely put people off and if they don't notice and it doesn't catch them in the act it may still get a pattern of faces for repeat offenders.

 

[SeanTFSI]

I always park as close to the local supermarket as possible. I've had the displeasure of a massive dent in my door and both my midluxury cars keyed, if it's going to happen i don't think where you park matters.

Some people are just scum and don't care, no thought for others and it drives me crazy getting worked up at the thought of some people's selfishness.

I've used a camera in the past which didn't work against my self entitled neighbour, I resolved the issue in other ways and they moved a few weeks later.

 

[SRRAE]

Within 3 days of getting my Audi I have a nice group of scratches 4-5 inches high and 5-6 inches long on my passenger door, obviously caused by a car or van scraping my car while trying to park next to it. I'd love to have a camera system which films the whole of the outside so you can send these poor drivers the bill for getting the door resprayed.

 

[777GE90]

Well I've now ordered my home surveilance camera system, it's put me £150 out of pocket but will give me some peace of mind at least. Next step is to order a dash cam that can record 360 whilst the car is turned off too.

Then after that, it's time to consider how I go about replacing the damage

Within 3 days of getting my Audi I have a nice group of scratches 4-5 inches high and 5-6 inches long on my passenger door, obviously caused by a car or van scraping my car while trying to park next to it. I'd love to have a camera system which films the whole of the outside so you can send these poor drivers the bill for getting the door resprayed.

Wow that really sucks, I know how that feels because some idiot done the same thing to me exactly after 1 week of ownership. Did you manage to catch them?

 

[rum4mo]

I think that you should be very careful about concealing any video camera that you set up in your house, the police will be more inclined to take action against you for videoing members of the public than help you with any damage caused by morons. That is crap but that is how we set the rules in our dysfunctional society - which is probably why people feel it is right and correct to damage other's property.

Owning an Audi, yes, not easy with the general hate around - which is fair enough as there are too many Audis involved with traffic transgressions - any/every day I am out driving my wife's Polo, and I see illegal overtakes or cutting up going on, it tends to be an Audi that is involved though mainly A3 with the odd dropped older A6 thrown in for good measure. Then there are these people who are just jealous of what you have been able to buy - I don't get that way of thinking at all, I might like the look of an RS6, a Masser or a Bentley, but I can also work out that none of these cars suits my needs or wallet - so why can't these nasty people that want to attack cars think that way - because they are dumb heads, and not just "low lifes" think that way!

I've found the need, on some motoring forums, to make that point that I am an Audi owner who drives it sometimes and not what is correctly hated, ie the "Audi driver" - these hate ideas have been created by some people's actions and not just for a laugh, so we should all behave when out on the road, my SIL used to have an M-B and they considered that having one of them bestowed special benefits when out and about, which was not being very clever.

So, another useful tip, make sure that when you are out in the pub wearing your special shoes, use a cubical instead of the urinals as someone might just accidentally pee on your special shoes?

Finally, my wife used to have a very smart Fiesta 1.6Si with the Zetec engine, one day when we came back to it in a garden centre car park, there was a crappy very old Fiesta parked next to it and some of its paint was on my wife's Si door, as there was no one around, and that Fiesta was rusting badly on its door panel, I gave it a serious kick - just for a bit of revenge, I must have hit it on the strong point where the anti-intrusion bar was as I ended up hobbling away with a very sore knee joint, ah well at least I tried to get revenge!