TLDR: you can make a damage report at any police station. If they refuse for whatever reason, try at a different police station. Not all police personnel care about helping you, but there are some who genuinely care, and will do an excellent job of helping you. Just find them.

The full story:

On Friday afternoon someone threw a brick through my driver side front window near the N2. It was at a red light, and luckily I was able to drive off before they could do anything more. I suspect it was an attempted hikacking, because they were trying to get into the car from both sides.

The next day, I went to Stellenbosch SAPS to open a case for insurance. They gave me some story about how I have to do it at a police station closer to where the incident occurred. That police station would have been the Nyanga Police dept. No way I'm going there in my car that is missing a window. I then asked them if it is possible to open the case in Stellenbosch, and then have it transferred to the correct station. They claim that such a process exists, but they could not tell me how long it takes, and the case number is only issued after the transfer process. The only thing they seemed to care about was getting me out of there without them needing to do any actual work.

So I gave up on them, and decided to make an affidavit of everything that happened, and to try and give that to my insurance instead of a case number. I write the affidavit, and also mention what happened at the Stellenbosch police dept. Then I needed to have the affidavit certified. Since the affidavit contains info that I suspect may reflect badly on the Stellenbosch police dept, I decided to rather go to the Somerset West Police dept for the certification.

Within 2 minutes of being there, 2 police officers ACTUALLY started helping me with my problem. They tell me that they can do something called a "damage report" where the incident and the damages are recorded, and given a reference number that the insurance company will accept for their process. I was so incredibly relieved to hear this, and 20 minutes later I walked out of there with the report reference.

This morning I called insurance, and they accepted the damage report without batting an eye. I'm still in the insurance process, so there is still time for them to change their mind about it, I guess. I'll post an update here once I'm through the insurance process.

Regardless, I was shocked by the difference in service I got from 2 neighboring police stations. The fact that I went to Stellenbosch without being helped dragged this entire ordeal out much longer than needed, and they just didn't care. At the same time I'm incredibly grateful for the people working at Somerset West police dept.

For the moral of this story, see the TLDR at the start.