Mortice lock removal

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not sure they do actually.

WOULD WE MISS BEDFORD?

[Timothy Murphy]

My wife did this in Florence with a hired car. A man from the car-firm opened the door with a kind of balloon which he inserted in the gap by the door lock, and pumped up. I've never seen this before.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Some Italian colleagues locked themselves out of their Fiat van, having driven it over from Italy. They called their breakdown cover which turned up in the form of an AA man. He went round to the back of his van and returned, much to our alarm (and theirs even more so;-), with a hammer. Anyway, he reached under a wheel arch and tapped it with the hammer. All the door lock buttons poped up!

I was just specing a new car for myself at the time. I crossed off central [un]locking...

[Owain]

(a) depends on how pretty Miss Bedford is?

(b) depends on how accurate your ICBM is?

Owain

[whitely525]

You should have requested chargeback from the CC.

If no success take them to the Financial Ombudsman Service. This can cost the CC Co ~300 ukpds even if you lose. This means they will almost certainly do something.

I believe it is now official that CC fraud is practically out of hands of the police and in the hands of the banks. There is concern that this is bad thing because lots of CC crime is related to other crime. However, even before this change the police probably wouldn't give a toss.

[Appin]

The message from [e-mail] contains these words:

Which of course I did. But remember that dealing with small persons in an Indidan Call Centre where most of them have only a limmited command of INDIAN English which is NOT the same in its grammar, syntax or use of tenses is not an easy exercise, especially as they seem to specialise in not listening to what's said to them. The few who seem to understand pass it on to someone else who doesn't. I can't get it into their heads that there were two fraudultent transactions on the same day. It took me less than an hour to track down exactly who had got what from whom and to where the bicycle had been delivered. But Citicard are refusing to treat it as a chargeback, in spite of the fact that the card never left my possession and the retailer delivered goods to an address other than that of the cardholder without any check being made. Even the "invoice address" given to the retailer (who did not send an invoice to that address) was not the precise address held by the card company, although the postcode was correct and a letter would have arrived.

Sadly, I doubt if they'll do anything. I have already spoken to Trading Standards and to the Financial Ombudsman service who have already written to Citicard, to no obvious avail. Hardly surprising, as Citicard have already failed to respond to (or even acknowledge) two recorded delivery letters sent as far back as November. I will, of course, contact the Financial Ombudsman service as soon as the statutory time limit for action by Citicard has expired.

It is probably simple but almost total incompetence on the part of Citicard, but lying seems to be the order of the day there. Not one of the countless promises of calls back has ever materialised. Needless to say I have ensured that calls were made to real geographical numbers (thanks to

so have cost me nothing, and have also ensured that I obtain the (alleged) names of those to whom I have been speaking, together with the times of calls and the content of the conversation.

However, bearing in mind that the card was branded Shell, I find the response of Shell to repeated calls to be absolutely incredibly unhelpful, bearing in mind the damage to THEIR reputation. After all, THEY chose to remove the card contract from the Royal Bank of Scotland and award it to Citicard. And just to make matters more complicated there's a second issue in that the rebate supposedly paid on purchase on the card is NOT being paid because Citicard don't recognise the list of Shell stations in GB at which purchases of Shell petrol validate payment of the rebate. They may speak English at the various Shell call centres, but they're no more use than Citcard's Indian call centre. Basically it's a case of "Not on our list of things we have an answer to

-- go away and pester someone else!"

Hence my advice

• Steer clear of Citicard

• Steer clear of Shell

What was a little surpising in this case was that there were meaningful details of delivery address. Quite clearly it was most unlikely that the culprits were living there under my name, but it would have been at least relevant to nose around and it would also have been relevant to consider the fact that the other transaction was a London Congestion Charge. A close look at the vehicles owned by the current denizens of the said address might at least put the wind up them.

In any case, my opinion of the grunts was already very low, so it's questionable whether it could drop much further.

[Appin]

The message from Owain contains these words:

Well, I can't find a Google image of any such individual -- at least in terms of Bedford, England. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear (based on train journeys in that area) that we can go on the assumption that such a female would be loud and brassy, with lots of bling and a compulsion to clart on makeup " as thick as it'll stick" and to show off as much of a pair of ugly breasts as can be displayed without the nipples falling out of her top.

Surely a shorter range missile would do the job more than adequately and perhaps more accurately?

[Dave]

I don't know what a shimmy is, but this reminds me of the time a teacher locked her keys in her car. The RAC were called and this is the way he got in.

Got a rubber wedge and inserted it into the top back corner of the door and the body, springing the top of the door outwards.

Took a brush with some form of lubricant and wetted the top door seal with it.

Took a well bent and obviously very well used piece if wire that was a fair bit thicker than a coat hanger and proceeded to fish for the un-lock button. I presume this wire was used at both ends so that he could hook it around the button that sticks out of the door where the glass starts and others where you unlock a different way.

He wasn't there 5 minutes before he was driving off. Just goes to show how easy it is, to get into a car without breaking a window. :-(

Dave

[Dave]

That is usually the air bag trigger. I have been told that if you hit that, the central locking unlocks. Quite why it does not trigger the air bags, I don't know.

Dave

[somebody]

In message , Appin writes

I've only once had trouble with a a CC company in the vain you describe. I got to so fed up of having the same conversations over and over again with the call centre that eventually I went to the police station and got myself a crime number.

The police station was as interested in it as the call centre to be honest, but AIUI, any allegation of a crime *must* be recorded and investigated. I had to make a total PIA of myself at the nick but eventually I got myself a crime number.

I then went back to the CC company and said (sort of long winded version of) "shove that up your asre, I'm not paying". As if by magic it all went away.

Hth, I do appreciate how frustrating these CC co's can be.

[Lobster]

I'm sure it still is easy; but for that reason not many cars these days have unlock buttons that can be hooked; ie, the are more like rods than golf-tees.

David

[Huge]

A friend of mine had 2 cars stolen from Bedford station within a couple of weeks of each other and the police told him they didn't have time to look at the CCTV footage. So he did it himself.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Most pros use slim steel tools to go down the side of the glass to the inside of the door and hook up the button or operating lever. For this reason decent cars have deadlocks which disable the pop up button operation. Also shrouds round the lock to try and prevent access to it. But only partially effective.

[cerberus]

Mmmm...the words Audi, half tennis balls & 'lock bumping' spring to mind :-(

Don.