We are just back from our trip to Buenos Aires.  We went there to meet with our developers, do a little team building, some one-on-one work and deliver iPads and laptops to the team.  Despite the story I’m about to tell here, the trip was extremely successful.  It was truly great to see our team there and to get to better know people that we work remotely with on a daily basis.  We’ve been down before, so this wasn’t the first time meeting most of them, but it had been a while and was long over due.  The trip started off on a bit of a sour note as Continental forced me to check my carry-on bag.  This bag had lenovo laptops, iPads, a drobo storage system as well as other electronics.  Luckily, I talked the gate agent into only checking it to Houston and not all the way to Buenos Aires (knowing there would be plenty of room on the larger 767 we were on from Houston to Buenos Aires).   After an inspection in Houston, I determined everything was in good order.  On to BA!

Upon our arrival Manuel and Juan (two of our team members) picked us up from the airport.  We went promptly to the loft apartment we’d rented for the week in Palermo Soho – a very nice neighborhood in Buenos Aires and fairly popular with tourists, ex-pats and tech entrepreneurs.  As is standard, we paid for the apartment in cash upon arrival and everything seemed to be in good shape.  The place was a bit more run down than the pictures on the listing had lead us to believe, but that is somewhat expected.

The loft was nice – it was on the 4th (top) floor and had three levels itself.  Per the listing it  had two of our main requirements: equal size bedrooms w/ full size beds in each & decent Internet w/ an office space to work from.   As is standard in Buenos Aires there was a keyed front door entrance to get into the building and then a keyed door to the apartment.  All doors lock when shut.

So far so good.  We unloaded all our bags, got settled in then went over to Manuel’s office to work for the day.  After work we went and met everyone at a local restaurant / pub ( Bangalore ).  Had a great time seeing the team and getting caught up with everyone.  After a few beers, we were thoroughly exhausted from all the travel and we decided to call it a night.  Juan dropped us back off at the apartment on his way home.

The next day started slowly.  I went to the super market to get some basic supplies.  It was a gorgeous day in Buenos Aires – clear, breezy, mid 70′s.   Perfect.   We opened the windows and proceeded to get settled in on our laptops.  I setup at the office upstairs and Jimmy setup on the ground floor at the kitchen table.  Both of us were responding to e-mails and taking care of various work duties.

The next thing Jimmy knows, a hand slaps him on the shoulder.  He turns around – stunned – and the person is putting his finger to his mouth “sshhhhhh” telling Jimmy to be quiet.  Jimmy exclaims and the guy starts telling him “Piso! Piso!” in English “Floor! Floor!”.  Jimmy started to resist and the person reached in his pocket as if to pull out a weapon.  At that point Jimmy got down on the floor.  There were a total of three guys in their twenties.  They began to pick up any and all electronics.  Jimmy’s mac book pro.  Two lenovo laptops.  an iPhone.  a flip HD cam.  along with the chargers, Jimmy’s notebook bag and a few other random things.   These guys were completely silent and had entered the apartment without making a sound.  At some point during this I noticed something was up.  I looked downstairs and glimpsed a stranger.  I picked up the phone upstairs to try to call the police, but it wasn’t working.  I then thought I would IM one of our team members and have them call – probably better anyway as it would be silent and they are native spanish speakers.  By the time I was about to do this, they had gone.  I went down stairs to find Jimmy shaken, but otherwise unharmed.

Upon inspection, they had gotten away with most everything.   Strangely enough they had left an iPad that was brand new in the box sitting right there.  An even stranger thing is that they brought with them and left behind cheap toys.   I swear I saw this in a movie or something.  Sound familiar to anyone? Really weird. We were wondering if they were the “toy gang” or something.

After we pulled ourselves together we contacted Juan and Manuel who drove over immediately.  We also contacted the owner of the apartment and the administrator who handled the letting.  She also came over an hour or two later.  We went down to the local police station and they took our statements and gave us a police report.  It was pretty standard for them I suppose – and they were pretty much all business, not surprised.  Afterwards we went back to the apartment and decided that we were going to move to a hotel.  We still had a fair amount of electronics and when the robbers left they’d taken a set of keys with them.  Even though the administrator was going to change the locks that day – it still didn’t feel safe.

The biggest mystery to me is how these people gained access to the apartment so silently.   In retrospect it felt very organized, targeted and professional.  I’m not sure if we were specifically setup or if they just knew that tourists often stayed in this apartment and we were the unlucky ones.  It is possible someone from the park simply saw us enter the apartment w/ our laptop bags. But it still doesn’t explain the easy entrance.  There were no forced doors / locks / anything.

To the owners credit, he agreed to give us our money back.  Still his attitude about the event was “we should expect things like this” and that “there was nothing he could do.”   I found that a little disingenuous.   Below is an e-mail I sent to him:

Dear Owner:

I almost hesitate to send this to you.  But, I wanted to follow up.  We checked into a hotel and are doing well.  It is obviously much more secure w/ a 24 hour front desk attendant and keyed entrances to the elevator and hotel room.   You asked me, what more you could do?  Well, I wanted to give you some suggestions:

1. The apartment is across the street from Armenia Plaza Park, so there is ample opportunity to observe the comings and goings of the people staying there.  It was probably pretty clear seeing two people get dropped off w/ laptop bags that we had some valuable computer equipment.   You have done very well for yourself in marketing your apartment.  It comes up reasonably well in the search engines and it has a nice page on vbro.com.  It also touts the Internet as a nice feature of the apartment.  As such, I imagine and Patricia confirmed that many people staying there usually do have iPhones, Computers, etc.   As such, it seemed just a matter of time that this would happen.  The apartment across the hall (#3) appeared to have much better locks on the door.  Given that you have so many people staying at that apartment and that you are catering to a more “high tech” crowd, I think it is reasonable that you put a more sophisticated – possibly electronic – locking mechanism in place on the front and apartment door. This way keys could be issued to the tenants and access rights taken away when they are finished with their stay.
2. I know that the policia aren’t terribly aggressive in going after this type of crime.  However, it would have helped tremendously if there was some sort of picture of the perpetrators.  Installing a camera at the top of the stairs that monitors the comings and goings from the apartment and records it to a computer hard drive (possibly even uploading it to a server) would be really easy and effective.   You might have a look at this: www.vitamindinc.com
3. It occurs to me that for the amount of computers they stole from us, it would be highly cost effective if someone rented out your place for a few days, made copies of the keys and then were able to wait until a suitable target appeared.  The people entered the apartment completely silently.  My associate was sitting at the kitchen table down stairs w/ his back turned to the door.  He did not hear a sound until someone grabbed him on the shoulder and told him to be quiet and get on the floor.  I barely heard anything sitting at the desk upstairs.  These people clearly had access to the building or were excellent at picking locks quickly and silently.  In addition, it is pretty easy to see when people would be staying in your place if you can access your listing and look at the calendar.   Maybe these people were not that sophisticated, but the intrusion felt planned, organized and targeted to me.  You are marketing your apartment at the high end of the market.  Typically we stay in an apartment in palermo hollywoodt, but we have had many problems w/ the Internet there in the past.  Thus we decided to give your place a try.   This particular apartment has a gate, a front door and then the apartment door – with very modern locks in place throughout.  It is about half the price of what you are charging.  We stayed in your place this time because we wanted to take a step up and stay in a nicer place w/ solid Internet as we wee planning to work out of the apartment much of the time.   Given that you charge this premium, I think the security of your apartment most certainly needs to be improved.

I hope that this doesn’t happen to future guests of your apartment.  I will say that I was very happy that you were agreeable to refunding our money.  And that you had the locks immediately changed.  This speaks to your character and I am not going to link to your listing when I blog about this incident.  But, I hope you heed this warning and beef things up on your end.

So that about sums it up.  I’d like to emphasize again that this was one incident out of an otherwise wonderful and productive time.  But, it did affect our entire trip.  We ended up in a hotel which was less than ideal as we would have liked to have more space to work.  Jimmy, in particular, was extremely inconvenienced as he had to finish the duration of the trip without a laptop or iPhone.  It was certainly a handicap from the get go.  Still getting to work w/ the team, getting to know everybody better and spend time with them was well worth it.  Next time we will certainly be a lot more cautious.   Lesson learned.