hetismij2

New French numberplates can display any departement the owner chooses. It does not have to be where they live, nor do they have to have the number on the plate. It is not the giveaway it might once have been.

BritishCaicos

kerouac

It is still a giveaway on rental cars. All of the Europcar fleet displays 76 and all of the Hertz fleet displays 60. I don't know if it is still the case, but Avis used to use 78.

hetismij2

But not all cars with 78 on them are rentals.

Seriously I very much doubt it makes a lot of difference. Thieves watch and observe before they break in. The numberplate is a very small part of it all. Opportunity is the thing. And as I have said so many times the chances are miniscule to the point of why even worry about it? If you are going to fret about it all the time then you cannot have an enjoyable holiday. It isn't always possible, or desirable, to stay somewhere, dump your bags and then see the sights. What about things you come across while travelling from A to b? Do you say sorry this village is lovely but we can't stop as we have a car full of stuff? Why even travel in by car in that case.

StCirq

<<Did you also change the license plates which tend to be another identifying mark of rental cars?>>

No, but I often rented the car from my garagiste in the Dordogne, where all the cars had 24 license plates. When I rented from AutoEurope, no, I did not change the license plates. I assume that would be illegal, no?

Michael

We did, and my wife and I were pick pocketed in Belem on the same day. The only thing they did not get are the passports and the International Driving Permit, which Europcar accepted in lieu of my regular CA license when I went to pick up the car two days later. Europcar did have me in their system as I have been renting from them for many years. Fortunately we were traveling with a friend who subsidized us for what would be the common expenses for the rest of the trip.

thursdaysd

@Michael - but did you have the stolen items in a money belt under your clothes?

walkinaround

Oh no. Please No. When I first saw this thread,I had a painful flashback to probably 10 years ago on this board when i read someone's advice to leave a local newspaper and a half eaten baguette in the car. It was gut wrenching back then and now it's just....what the...????

When I visit the US, should I leave a USA Today and a half eaten hamburger on the dashboard and think i'm clever?

Michael

No. In fact I carry them in a pouch with my belt looped through it. Have been doing that for years. I probably forgot to close the inside zipper. I have worked out a way of not forgetting to close that zipper and to secure it so that two hands are necessary to open it.

michele_d

Our car was burglarized in Portugal. Apparently when we hit the key fob to lock the car the thieves were nearby and it bounced off a device of theirs that allowed them to unlock the car. I did not find this out until we returned home and our dear Fodorites told me about this type of common theft. The thieves left our luggage but took all of our beautiful pottery and antiques we had purchased in Spain to decorate our tasting room with. For the remainder of our trip, 5 days, we continued to use the fob to lock the car but we never left anything in the trunk. Our car was mysteriously 'unlocked' a minimum of four times over the next five days. Hotel parking lots, tourist attractions etc. Very discouraging but at least we didn't have anything else to lose. Once we got home and learned about this trick it made sense why our car kept being unlocked every morning when we would get in. We were being targeted at every turn.

On a side note...I LOVE the idea of the cable through all the luggage handles...makes it a bit heavy to just scamper off with.

joannyc

Duvies

Car 'jamming', as per michelle d's post, is a big reality in South Africa. People can stand quite a way from your vehicle and jam your remote by pressing a similar device that prevents the signal from locking your vehicle. They don't even have to break in, they just open the door. I have now developed the habit of physically checking that at least the driver's door is locked.

From all the posts, it seems as though entry into the vehicle is obtained by forcing open the boot or it's lock and not by way of breaking the side windows? We'll then have to follow the advice to park with the rear end as close as possible to some feature that will make it very difficult to open the boot ( I have finally been able to see the hedgerows in OsG).

AJPeabody

Fob jamming! Who would have thought of that as a risk? I will need to ad this to my list of paranoid precutions.

Just a thought: Finding the car unlocked every morning may just be the result of a dead fob battery never locking the car in the first place.

maitaitom

Sometimes you have to do it when traveling, or you'd miss seeing a lot of places. We have left luggage in the car at both Oradour-sur-Glane and Mont St Michel, because they were in the middle of hefty drives Did I worry? Yes, but not that much. Had I not done it, I would have never seen either place, and both are well worth visiting. I've also done it at dozens of other places in Europe and the U.S. Life's a gamble. Odds are everything will be intact when you get back to the car. And if not, you can buy some clean underwear at your next spot.

Duvies

Well, que sera,sera. I think we are going to do the stops as planned with our luggage in the boot, but are going to make it as difficult as possible for somebody to break into it. We may not get another chance to visit Oradour again, and we all would dearly love to see/experience it. Same for the other places. Thanks for some awesome posts.

michele_d

" Just a thought: Finding the car unlocked every morning may just be the result of a dead fob battery never locking the car in the first place. "

Don't you think we were hyper-conscious of locking our car after this incident? It WAS not a dead fob battery. We checked that the car was locked repeatedly, almost to the point of being paranoid. But because we were still using the fob the same thing was obviously happening repeatedly. It was quite the puzzle to us until we posted and Fodors and got the real answer.

Leely2

FWIW, (probably not much given that this is entirely anecdotal), I visited Oradour with luggage in the boot. This was about 10 years ago, and maybe things have changed. But honestly, I didn't think twice about it. Did think twice about leaving luggage in the car in Sicily, but even there we made a few stops and took our chances because there were sights we really, really wanted to see and it wasn't practical to check into a hotel first.

Oradour-sur-Glane is a very moving, sobering place. I think you will get a lot out of your visit.

ahbonvraiment

kerouac

It is relatively common in France to drive corpses around the country, because not dying in the department where you are supposed to be buried creates enormous complications. Most family doctors are fully willing to issue a death certificate in the appropriate place. My grandfather died in Verdun in a hospital, but his death certificate says that he died at home after a final transfer.

However, this is rarely an issue when breaking into cars.

MmePerdu

Did they get her back?

BTW, you sound a lot like a certain Belgian who used to hang out around here. Could it be?