Hi All- new to the forum but have been lurking since I picked up my ride about 3 weeks ago. Anyway I had a terrible time today & am feeling the need to vent a little, and to let you know of the problems that I encountered.

So, I am on the phone at 3:00 PM in my office in beautiful East Orange, NJ, I look out the window & I see my drivers side door wide open. It took a few seconds to register in my brain, I went flying out the door & running down a flight of stairs. I am about 10 feet from the car & the guy inside my car sees me & starts to run. I chased him out of my parking lot & he got into a waiting blue Nissan Quest & he was gone.

I got the plate number & instantly called the police with my description, hoping in desparation that they could do something, but I knew the damage had already been done. When I got back to my car, I almost started to cry. The drivers door handle was gone, the lock was gone, the ignition was gone, wires are hanging out of the steering column, & I am bumming.

This is where the story really starts to get good. It was pouring rain in NJ today & when the guy got the doors unlocked (without the Audi alarm going off, BTW) he also made all the windows go down. SO now I am waiting outside in the rain for the cops to show, and there is no way to put the windows up. I decide to call Audi roadside assistance for help. After about 1/2 hour on the phone with them, I was basically told that they cannot help me at all. They said that because this was the result of vandalism, that they will not do anything to help me. Dissapointed, I call AAA. They will send a tow truck, the only problem is, I cannot get the car into neutral, as the ignition is gone & the steering & auto trans are both locked. They finally tell me that the only thing that they can do for me is to call a locksmith & give me a $100.00 credit for the service. I say OK, but when the locksmith calls, he tells me that he cannot do anything with the car & that it has to go to a dealer for the ignition to be fixed.

By this time it is almost 6:00 PM & I know that I am running out of time. The cops show up, take the report, put the description of the getaway car on the wire, and tell me that if I leave the car overnight, that the thiefs will deffinetly come back to finish the job & steal it. I am freaking out, my car is getting soaked & I am running out of options. I decide to call Paul Miller Audi in Parsippanny, NJ as I had my 2000 A6 Avant serviced there before the lease was up & it was returned. The service department was able to refer me to a towing company that might be able to help.

Another hour goes by & the towtruck driver gets there, he is somehow able to start the car with a screwdriver & at least gets it into neutral, but the steering is still dead, and the car will not stay on. He was able to get the windows up & with some pushing, we got it placed so that he could get it on the flatbed & bring it to Paul Miller.

Now I am waiting for the damage report but I know it ain't going to be cheap. What really bothered me about this whole ordeal, was the lack of help of any kind that I received from the Audi Roadside Assistance program. I cannot believe that they could not even come & try to tow it to the dealer for me...totally lame. I was also incredibly surprised that the car was so easy to break into without the alarm going off. The tow truck driver showed me that basically you pop off the cover on the door lock & any key will turn the lock & the alarm off. Again totally lame!

Anyway, I still love my car & the great discussions on this forum. I can't wait to get it back. After all this, I am left with the one interesting thing that the cop told me. "The thief's love the 2.7t because of the quattro & that it can out run an East Orange cop car on the Garden State Parkway!" HAHA....ughh.

 

gun needed on those people >( grrrrrrrrrr

 

He told me the same thing. He checks out every audi b/c they are #1 stolen car there. He said not to let it out my my sight b/c they can't catch them. Sorry about your car though. Good thing it has immobilizer!

 

I would love to get a new one. Anyway sorry to hear about your troubles, roadside assistance is really useless for everything except a jump start. AAA is about the same.

 

as much as you.

I'm glad nobody got hurt in the incident...except, of course, the Audi. It is a nice car, and when the fix it...you will appreciate the rest of its life.

 

Sorry to hear about your problem. Totally sucks. You're lucky he didn't pull a gun on you. Good luck

 

an immobiliser, so they were quite easy to steal. Later cars with an immobilser are more work to steal (the chip in the key transmits a rolling code to the ignition, before the car is allowed to run for more than 30 seconds - hence the tow driver couldn't make it run). Once the system encounters a "violation", it shuts down the system for 24 hours unles the system is reset. So thieves sometimes still operate on the assumption that all Audis are the same/easy to steal.

The alarm horn is not especially loud, and most people don't pay any attention to car alarms, no matter how loud. The immobiliser is far more effective at actually preventing theft than a horn IMHO.

The pre-owned warranty does not include service for cars that have been vandalised - only failures in which Audi may be held accountable in some way. I don't think many if any pre-owned car warranty (including roadside assitance) would cover theft damage/vandalism.

 

the lock pops out, and all you have to do is touch the two wires together and the alarm goes off and all the doors are unlocked (and as described the windows could be rolled down if you have that enabled in the Vag). This is a well known problem on the X5 & 3 Series. There is a fix for it - #1 you can buy a body colored cap to put over the external keyhole, and you can also get into the door panel and take the wires off the external lock - thus making it impossible for a fiend to accomplish the trick. Only downside is that you will NOT be able to get into your car should your battery go dead EEEEKK.

 

April, so the post-'01 C5 A6s ('02 -'04) are more difficult to steal?

 

Roadside is for breakdowns, can't expect it to handle vandalism