My Debt Blog

My wife called me with some really bad news this evening. Someone had broken into her car and went through it, opened the trunk, and stole her purse while she was away on a camp fieldtrip. After reporting it to the police as well as the camp, I guess one of the guys had the gull to write down she left her trunk open! We then had to figure out the damage part.

So her purse is a somewhat expensive and nice purse (D&B ladies) and has some value to it. She also got her barely one month old sunglasses (Coach) that I gave her for our first anniversary in the purse taken. Not to mention the wallet had no cash but a couple credit cards and debit card. There were also other various things like makeup, lip gloss, feminine things.

First thing I did was started calling up the banks and getting the cards shut down. Our primary account I accidently deactivated her debit card, but later she actually had that in her pocket so it got turned back on when I called them back a half hour later. I had her other credit cards also reported as stolen and as it turns out, they used her credit card at a Target across the street. Another card we got turned off did not have anything recently purchased with it, so that was simple to shut down. The final card was another bank account debit card to our other bank which doesn’t have much money in it at this time and they decided to use that as well.

What we can tell is they broke into her car around 5 pm, used a credit card across the street at 15 minutes later and bought $75 worth of stuff at Target. Then they went down the street to a McDonalds and spent $10 on the bank card, which easily processed as a credit transaction, so no PIN is required. Right near that area is a Walgreens which they made 4 separate purchases for various smaller amounts, and then dropped $115 as a credit transaction (Walgreens policy requires signature for purchases over $50) and signed for the transaction. That last charge was at 5:30 pm and overdrew the account almost $2. Over a relatively short period of time, the thief managed to spend about $200 before she even realized her purse was gone going to her car to head home at 6 pm.

The value of the stuff that was taken, purse, sunglasses, and gift cards with value on them, probably total around $400. We will be able to recover the money spent fraudulently on the accounts, but the odds of getting her stuff back are low. I think that is what makes this harder is her purse being taken is more emotionally draining than worrying about them stealing the banks money through the credit cards. These people went to places with video cameras and their transactions have a timestamp on them so we know exactly where they were at, what time they were there, and how much they spent. I hope they get caught because stealing from other people is not acceptable behavior. In the end I told her she is lucky they didn’t steal the whole car because that would really bad.

I’m not sure if our car insurance policy or homeowners insurance will cover the things being stolen from her car or not, but I plan to check with my insurance guy tomorrow. We don’t have the money right now to replace these things ourselves. The purse was an actual nice thing she was very good about saving for, owned, and toted it around with pride. I feel bad about this happening to her and keep trying to reassure her that it is not her fault someone stole from her, but sadly these things can happen.