think about what is in your owners manual. The sales receipt? All those papers they give you, even if you pay cash for the car. Your VIN number is on some of those papers, or you wrote in your VIN number on the front page of the manual. In addition, they codes to get a new key is also in the manual.
I think whoever stole the manual will have a new key made and take the car in a few weeks when you have forgotten about the stolen manual. They won’t have broken in this time, they will just go to the dealer and have a new key made.
Before I retired from the National Auto Theft Bureau we encountered a group that was blowing out the passenger side window with an automatic center punch or spark plug porcelain and stealing the owners manual. Usually happened in apartment house or condo parking lots. After owner replaced window they would comwe back with a key cut from code in manual and steal the car. The code could be converted on the web and some had their own key machine.
For the,duplicate the key,from the vin number experts: I don’t think a dealer will make a key from a VIN or key number. A lot of cars have the key number on the glove box door.
I was seriously thinking about swiping an owner’s manual for my Jeep because the original owners apparently misplaced it. The dealership that I purchased the vehicle from indicated that the book was out of print and that I could no longer obtain a copy. That is when my evil side took over, trying to think of ways to get one. I thought that maybe I would go test drive another jeep at another dealership and try to get it that way… I was patient though and after many emails and phone calls to the dealership, they were able to obtain one for me…
As I was listening to Amy, particularly when she said someone else had had the same experience, it struck me that this is probably a gang, fraternity, sorority or chess club initiation rite. I expect that, whatever the group, it is of kids who are reasonably well-to-do, so they take nothing of value, just something to prove they broke into the car. They may even have a perverted understanding of law, thinking that if they take nothing of value they have not committed a crime, or at least not a serious crime.
I hope Amy has reported this to police and I hope they have investigated this angle. Maybe catching some kids at this stage will save them from moving on to worse things.
same thing happened to friends of mine in DC last week…the thieves bypassed an expensive GPS system among other things. It’s weird, but there is something going on.