Oh I need a hand hold and a posse with pitch forks

[LaurieFairyCake]

Some scrotey bastards have stolen the catalytic converter and the Lamda sensor off my 16 year old car

And I can't afford the £700 to get it fixed

And I don't want to buy a new car (can't really afford it without some giant hire purchase loan)

We manage without it most days but we need it to go on holiday in 8 weeks time

Hiring a car is genuinely scary - last time we hired one we actually returned it that day as there was a compulsory £1000 excess - and we were too nervous to drive the bloody thing (even though I've been driving 30 years!)

The garage said it's happened to all the roads in our area over the last 3 days and one of the mechanics confronted the 3 blokes doing it but the had barbed wire weapons round metal poles - the police turned up within 5 minutes and couldn't catch them

I'm so ANGRY 😡 - so totally FURIOUS as my shitty old car being targeted

How do you prevent it happening again when you've had the thing repaired ?

Have had bad experiences with hiring cars in the past but you can buy insurance to cover the excess. Buy it yourself online before you pick up the car not from the hire company as theirs is always much more expensive

OP, for future reference, for hire cars go to Money Saving Expert and they have links for very cheap car hire excess insurance so you don’t have to pay the extortionate excess charges the hire companies try to sell you.
I pay around £30 per year for multiple hire car loans and don’t have to drive paranoid that it’ll get scratched etc.

Glad your insurance is paying out!