Stolen DVDs
 

Does anyone have any horror stories of stolen DVDs? If so, did you try to recover them and how?

A couple months ago, I moved out of an apartment due to disagreements with a roommate. I had all of my DVDs packed up in boxes a few days before I left. I later found out (after I unpacked my movies) that about twenty or so movies were missing.
My roommate let a friend of his stay at the apartment. That friend told me that my roommate had taken the DVDs. I contacted my roommate, and argued and argued after he admitted he took them, but I still don't have my movies.
Later, I discovered that his friend had taken about ten movies out of the cases and left the empty cases. I know this because all of the movies that were missing just happened to be movies that I introduced him to while he was there.
I moved into a new place, with what seemed like good folks. Except they were unemployed and ended up not coming up with the rent or power by the end of the first month. Then I came back to the apartment one day and discovered that all of my furniture was stolen along with a few DVD box sets. They robbed me and moved back to another state.

I've had many things stolen from me before, but this was one of the worst experiences. For some reason it makes me more angry that the movies were stolen than the furniture. I guess because I've put so much time and effort into my collection and I'm very proud of it. On top of it they were stolen by kids who don't know or really appreciate movies.

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i guess they do if they are for free :)
sorry for my sarcasm. i have more fear of fire destroying my collection than
some theft. if someone ever broke into my place, there are more valuable
items than my 800 dvds. would be a bit hard to carry anyhow.
reading your stories i recommend you spend more money on rent and move
to some nicer area, where you don`t get your dvds stolen constantly.

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I think you need to find a better class of friend and put a dead bolt on your door if you are going to have room mates.

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Find a better class of friends, live by yourself, and get renters insurance.

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Yeah, this experience has definitely put the nail in the coffin. I never had experiences like this up until the last couple of months. From now on, I'm either living alone or with long-time friends.

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I didn't do it.

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Say that's that, mattress man.

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The only sort of upside as time goes on is that DVDs have become too common to be worth very much if they're not collector's items, and even then, most pawn shops and average joes still won't know what they're worth, so it seems less and less likely that DVDs are what's going to be stolen.

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No one accused you...you wouldn't say that unless you DID do it and you wanted to deflect blame, huh?

Take 'im away, boys. ;)

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I live with my brother so I thankfully don't have anything to worry about and his friends are also great friends with me...very lucky over the years.

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This is true. I remember reading once upon a time how DVD's were actually a popular item to be stolen because you could just take a pillow case and quickly fill it up and go. Back then you could count on an easy return. However, with the resale value so low now it is just not worth the effort.

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Be careful with Renters or Person Property Insurance. Often, they have specific clauses for media that either exclude them completely, or set a limit on how much you can claim for lost/stolen/damaged media. In addition, even if you have coverage, appraisers will grant you a pittance for the movies.

If you have a very large collection, I strongly suggest you get a specific rider with a count of titles owned and estimated value. Pay the little extra fee per year for "full replacement value" coverage as well.

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Since we're talking about DVDs being stolen and having to deal with the insurance companies, I have a hypothetical question...

If an insurance company offered to pay you $10 per DVD in cash, how many DVDs in your collection (as a percentage) would you actually replace? Would you just turn around and spend the money on something else? Put the money towards Blu-ray? Actually try to buy back all the titles you lost?

Out of my 100 or so titles I would probably only replace 25 of them and then spend the rest on something else.

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Bake him away, toys!

In all seriousness, my Bryan Singer video journals disappeared almost immediately after I bought the Superman set and have still been trying to figure out how to get a replacement disc.

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I said it in another thread recently, but someone stole "La Jetee / Sans Soleil" from my workplace. It would have been a coworker, it could have been a client, so far no leads.

Although I'm checking for reactions. After you watch the scene where a giraffe gets shot in the neck and bleeds to death for real in "Sans Soleil", your face will never be the same again.

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the sad part is, whoever stole them from you will prob wind up bringing them to some second hand store that will give them a buck a piece for them at best, when I am sure that if you are like me, you had some very rare and hard to find discs in your collection. I think of this everytime I pick up some real rare gem at a pawn shop for 3 or 4 bucks

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GPS tracking unit in every DVD case, a bit costly but makes search and destroy missions much easier.

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I remember people would get even with leechers back when people used to copy vhs tapes. The person who never bought or rented but showed up with a blank tape would be subjected to a shock in between movies of a few seconds of some porno. The same could be accomplished today with a little disk switching. ;)

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this is why one shouldn't display their dvds as if it's a video store, because of all those evil dvd thieves...I recommend putting your dvds in here:

http://www.dorsetsoftware.com/media/25790/safe.jpg

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The maintenance guy where I lived decided to come in one day & help himself to about 120 DVD's as well as the DVD player, a Playstation + games, about 300 CD's, a jar of change & misc. other crap then disappear. Police came, report filed, blah, blah.

The next day I went looking for him or my stuff & ended up at the record store. I ask if anyone had come in & describe the stolen media (some kinda unusual stuff in there that made it obvious it was mine). So the manager asks me back in the office & sitting there was about half the DVD's & CD's. He knew the stuff was stolen & knew the owner, me, would come looking & held onto it, bless him.

So while we were there in the backroom debating what we should do, numbnuts maintenance guy WALKS IN to sell some more. We call the cops, arrested! They let me search his truck (Playstation & more was still in there). Due to his prior record, he goes to state prison for about 3 years or so. Didn't get back quite everything.

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again the question pops up in my head: in what neighborhoods do you guys live??

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It's good that you got some of the stuff back. Too bad you didnt get it all boack though. That really sucks.

Makes you wonder if there was any research done before they hired this guy to go into peoples homes.

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things like this can happen in just about any neighborhood. if someone lived in the ghetto and wanted to do a burglary, do you really think they would do it there in the ghetto where most dont have 2 nickels to rub together? or would they go to a better neighborhood, where they got a better chance of more profitable felonious activity. in any area of the country, show me a good area, and I can prob show you a ghetto area not terribly far.

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He'd been there for several years without incident. And the last incident in his criminal record prior to that was probably 15 years old. Think his wife left him & he quickly developed an expensive habit. Eh, it was like 5 years ago anyway so I ain't bugged by it no more. The capture was funny as heck, tho'.

It was a small apt. building in a nice neighborhood, too. Like someone else said, junk like this can happen anywhere.

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Thankfully, no. My brother did steal my copy of Borat, leaving just the case. I bought a used copy of the DVD only for $0.99 on Amazon. Small price to pay, but I can't imagine what I'd do if I came home and found all of my 2800+ DVD/BDs gone.

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yes my sister had some guys around from me they ended up taking a few dvds and video games but the really bad part is the heirloom jewelary that was taken from my mom.

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yeah me too. I think when I get my own apartment I'll hide the rare/OOP DVD's someplace seperate from the others..maybe a laundry hamper or ...just someplace you woulden't think someone would look.

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thank gosh you got a lot of it back though. very lucky!

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hmmmm...hey what about putting dvd's in a storage facility? do ppl steal from those? that's not a question exclusively to the member's post I've quoted - I'm just asking all in general.

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isn`t the whole purpose of a dvd collection to watch the movies when you want!? if they are put away in a storage facility it pretty much destroys the whole idea of collecting in the first place :)
unless for the people who really just collect the dvds and don`t actually watch the movies :)

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I discovered that my copy of Se7en was missing a long time ago. Don't know what the hell happened to it. Eventually I bought another copy for cheap.

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When I first met my wife, she really didn't care about collecting films and didn't own many of her own. To her, movies were just something to pass the time on boring days and she treated them as such. They were scratched and worn to almost unworkable condition. In contrast, I treated them like treasures and kept them well cared for and was an avid collector, including rare imports and hard to find films, as well as a lot of criterion.

After three years of being with me the habit had kicked in for her too, and she came to prize the collection of 1500 films (including tv shows and box sets) I had acquired over the years. Fast forward a years and she cheats on me with some douche bag, then goes in for the divorce. After everything was said and done she stole 65% of my collection.

Of course I use "stole" loosely, but I think this counts. Nothing worse than being weaseled out of your hard earned collection, even if done in within the limits set by the law.

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Just make sure you have clear emails sent back and forth where they admit to stealing them (or letting a friend take them) and call the police. With that police report you can threaten law suits... usually the threat of doing so will get them to FedEx them back to you. Heck, they crossed state lines its a federal crime now.

Just be sure you spell out each DVD name taken... heck, link Amazon web-links to everything. Then, after you get that you can send a follow-up email stating the value of the movies which can raise the larceny charge.

I had someone steal a bunch of CDs from me once in a CD wallet. I used the empty cases I stored away to bring the total over $300. After a deputy explained reading our emails back and forth and bringing up the misdemeanor charge they gladly returned everything. Technically it would have probably only gone to a civil court... but still, the douche didn't know that.

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My friend lived in a condo and he was always traveling and he also had a house up in NH (which was his primary residence). He hired a cleaning woman for his condo,well when he sold the condo and moved the CDs to his house in NH he found that all the discs were missing!
Damn cleaning woman cleaned him out!

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seems like a fair sacrifice in order to get rid of that woman :)
but jokes aside, california marriage law seems to suck a bit; she cheats
on you and still gets half??

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So people actualy admit in emails that they've stolen DVDs/CDs?

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I've heard that type of story before. I think if I were in a situation where I had to hire a cleaning lady, I'd make sure she had a long resume of good ratings. I don't trust anyone.

I've heard stories of that before = cleaning ladies stealing things from people.

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A cleaning lady is simply someone that you let into your house, oftentimes when you arent there, to clean.
It takes alot of trust for me to let someone into my place, with me not there.

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:thumbsup: My feel-good story of the day

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No kidding.

Interesting. I know it varies state by state but in Massachusetts every time someone sells used media discs the store is required by law to record valid (driver) license info and log the merchandise. Too bad every state did not require this ..as I'm sure your thief very well could have been arrested by the time you even showed up at the record store.