Looking for a 'knocked off' bike

[Toks]

Before you don your black gowns and white wigs I should point out that I was only after one bike in particular - my own! Huh? Well last week I'd been hanging out with my not so little man (school summer holidays) and we’d had a great week, but alas it went sadly pear shaped last Friday evening. Some nasty little sh1t bags nicked our bikes. They were locked up for around 5 minutes with around forty other bikes at the N1 shopping centre in Angel North London. We popped into the GAP store to buy a top for my son and returned to find the spot where our bikes had been chained - empty.

While I remained frozen to the spot both with incredulity and mild shock some bloke said he saw these kids take the bikes and pointed in the Essex Road direction. Myself and my son ran in the general direction of Essex Road kinda of hoping to catch sight of the little fcukers. No Luck. So the same evening I did the Police Report thing, the Gum Tree Check thing and the EBay search thing. Still No Luck.

If you think there’s a lot of bikes around with cycling’s current popularity its crazy how many Blue/Black looking Road Bike you see when you’re looking for yours. I spent Saturday feeling a bit sorry for myself and did a few more searches in local 2nd hand bike shops - still no luck.

Today I widened the search to Brick Lane which is notorious for pond life scumbags selling stolen bikes. Myself and Steph saw lots of decent looking Hybrids which probably retail between £300-£700 being sold for as little as £50 by various dodgy looking hustlers. There was only a couple of Road Bikes. We even stood in support while one guy held on to a stunning Wilier Road Bike that he felt was clearly his. He and us were surrounded by lots of kids insisting he prove it was his by showing them a receipt. Imagine having to buy back a £3000 bike from some little teenage hood rat for £100. Anyway fortunately for him the police showed up and the pond life scarpered pretty quickly so the guy didn't have to part with his cash to get back his own bike

So there you have it I'm now Road bike-less. Its very tempting to dip into my savings account for £2000 and buy another one but I think I'll wait a bit and maybe spend a bit of time doing some DIY. I hope to see you all at the ACC Member only Road Race. Cheers Toks

PS For those of you who are London based, especially there’s a picture of the bike on my Blog. It has speed play pedals.

[Dombo]

Bad news Toks, but keep checking ebay and scumtree, particularly for frames only as the scum may have dismantled them to sell as parts - they'll usually have a note on ebay saying to check their other items. If advertised as a complete bike then numpty descriptions are a clue and the speedplays will be a dead giveaway. They hardly ever appear separately so watch for them too.
Once you're pretty sure you've found it then use a service like esnipe, put in an outrageously high bid to ensure winning it and once won arrange to pick up and pay cash, thus offering the scum the chance to save his paypal charges. As paypal payments can be traced and reversed the fckuer will probably agree to that. Turn up with proof its yours, and perhaps take a couple of beefy mates to discourage uncooperative behaviour.
Good luck.

[Phil S]

If I see them I will kill them

[Marek]

That is really bad news matey, I hate it when things like that happen. It takes a long time to get used to a bike and to get it set up just purrfect like you like it and to have it nicked is awful, its happened to me before as well.

Do you have contents insurance on your house? If so you can normally claim for a stolen bike, so you should be able to get the money back if you have the crime number.

Cheers

Marek...

[Toks]

[quote="Marek"]That is really bad news matey, I hate it when things like that happen. It takes a long time to get used to a bike and to get it set up just purrfect like you like it and to have it nicked is awful, its happened to me before as well.

Do you have contents insurance on your house? If so you can normally claim for a stolen bike, so you should be able to get the money back if you have the crime number.

Cheers

Marek...

[Toks]

[quote="Phil S"]If I see them I will kill them

[Mike I]

When I had a bike nicked a couple of years ago I got a call from Islington police who thought they might have found it (they hadn't in fact). They told me though that they had 200-300 stolen bikes which they were trying to match to descriptions and, as far as I can make out, had just one officer doing it, along with all his other duties.

It struck me that, even if a stolen bike is recovered, the chances of the police matching bike to owner is pretty slim. If you haven't already done so, you could probably make that job easier for them by providing as much by way of description as you can (including photos). It might be worth asking if you can have a look round their stock of recovered bikes as well.

[Toks]

Thanks Mike, that's one approach I hadn't thought of trying.

[Dombo]

i've had a quick trawl through ebay but nowt yet. have you mentioned this on bikeradar, widen the search a bit?

[tel]

Hey Toks, just a thought, although I`m on hols at the end of the week, I`ve a spare road bike you can borrow for a month or so (size 54) might be a tad on the small size though.

Terry

[Toks]

Thanks Dumbo I've done the Ebay and Gum tree thing today. Hey thanks for the offer Terry, I've actually just been offered a stand in bike to use for a few weeks.

[Dombo]

Dumbo?

[Michelle]

Tee hee