Stolen bikes

came across this in a post on reddit:
police did a raid and found a bunch of stolen bikes. have a look if you've had one nicked..

https://news.met.police.uk/news/officers-recover-stolen-bikes-during-raid-in-bow-436456?s=09

removed

Contact the seller, tell him you want to buy it, get their address and challenge them in person/call the police and let them know of the situation. This might be difficult now the seller has removed the listing from Ebay, sounds like they got worried after you contacted them. If it gets listed again, hit the buy-it-now.

ive found out its a bike shop selling it and removed the post as im in actual contact now via social media.
they said they got the year wrong on the job lot message.
Also they said i need the serial number for it and my friend has lost that as it was stolen years ago, now i feel like i cant get it back.

Is there any other way?
i just have photos, The scratches on the fork are the same too

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Get your mate to check his receipts or contact the shop gulp, if it was purchased from a shop

Failing that, did he make a police report or insurance claim? Both of which should have included the serial number.

Also they said i need the serial number for it and my friend has lost that as it was stolen years ago, now i feel like i cant get it back.

If you are certain its the bike then just go with your friend and take it.

Ive managed to find even more photos of the bike as evidence for comparison and now the shop has agreed its the exact same one without me having the serial number! Picking it up sometime this week!

Cheers

result! well done!

Three days after stealing my Cannondale thieves returned to my building at 2:25am, forced their way into the bike room and stole 5-10 bikes (it's hard to be sure) over a period of 2 hours!

This time they got my wife's hybrid bike -- if you see a coral Specialized Sirrus 2.0 like the one attached for sale please let me know.

(A reminder to get insurance if you can't afford to lose your bike -- I always thought of this bike storage room as being quite safe and thick kryptonite locks as taking too long to cut for the average thief, but I was wrong!)

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Sorry to hear about your losses.

I always thought of this bike storage room as being quite safe

Unfortunately, a lot of communal bike storage, especially in new developments, isn't. For the most part, that's because it tends to be badly managed, e.g. there's no proper oversight of keys or other access methods, and once thieves are in there overnight, they're generally quite safe getting all the bikes off whatever they're secured to. There have been many, many incidents like this. The most important requirement is for such storage to have a person or person(s) who properly looks after it, changes locks/keys every once in a while, who knows who has keys, etc. A secondary aspect (less of a factor, but still significant sometimes) is that much of it is badly designed, e.g. easily broken into from the street or perhaps in a courtyard that's visible through gates, etc.

Doesn't help now, of course, but it's worth everyone's while to look into this carefully before leaving bikes in such a facility that typically quite a lot of people can access.

Hope you find a lead or get them back somehow--slim chances, but there have been some remarkable recovery stories.

Yeah for sure, and new developments are clearly shiny targets. In this case they climbed over the front gate and just kicked the bike room door hard until it opened as it was only secured magnetically. On a similar topic, the actual bike racks in the room were total garbage and I'm surprised the thieves cut the locks instead of the super thin metal racks.

In the past I've always tried to keep my bike indoors (also for maintenance reasons) but it's hard to convince one's significant other to keep many bikes in a small London flat!

I counted the broken locks on the ground and it seems they made off with 12 bikes last night!!!

Would Apple Airtags help find them? We have literally just put one on our cat so I have no idea how good, bad or useful they are.

I had that idea when Airtags came out and YouTube was awash with people deliberately getting their bikes nicked, but of course I didn't do anything about it...

I'm surprised the thieves cut the locks instead of the super thin metal racks

I'm not--it's a lot easier to wheel bikes without locks still attached.

It sounds like mainly a design issue, then, so the door clearly needs beefing up, but of course that won't change the apparent fact of how easy it is to access once the gate is climbed (and how easy it is to get back out of the gate once inside?).

It is only an idea. As I said, we have only just put the tag on the cat so it will be interesting to see if it works or not.

I'm not--it's a lot easier to wheel bikes without locks still attached.

True.

It sounds like mainly a design issue, then, so the door clearly needs beefing up, but of course that won't change the apparent fact of how easy it is to access once the gate is climbed (and how easy it is to get back out of the gate once inside?).

Once over the gate you can press the button to get out. You need to do some climbing to get to the bike room but it's not hard. They've been talking about putting spikes or whatever on top for ages.

Anyway, not much to be done now, keep your loved ones/bikes close!

We had a break in to our bike room a little while ago. Luckily my bike wasn't taken but I only keep my shopping bike, old steel Concord, in there. The theives apparently jumped the fence between our car park and the one next door so insurance would be tough as they didn't "break" in.

Sorry to hear about the thefts - a friend of mine had his bikes stolen in the same way.

They used an emergency service key (can be bought on eBay/Amazon) to bypass the magnetic building door then when straight to the electrical cupboard and turned off the magnetic locks of the bike room.

They did not cut any bike lock though as they stole the full racks since they are only attached with 2x bolts. A big design flaw for which you can't sue the developer!

And they came back three times on separate days to raid the full bike store.

My friend management company had a vault type door installed afterwards which requires both fob & keys to be opened so can't be bypassed by turning off the electricity.

Most property developers sadly just put on the minimum possible lock they can for a bike store door. Generally this will be a single mag lock at the top. These can then be broken open with surprisingly little brute force. They really need at least a 2nd mag lock placed on a different part of the door frame. However, whether or not that gets done really depends on how good the managing agent for the development is. Sadly most new build developments with bike storage these days are hit by gangs within the first couple of months of completion, and the whole bike store is cleared out. I've had 2 full bikes and a rear wheel stolen this way over the years I lived in London.

I believe most mag locks should fail in a locked state, though. In other words, if there is a power cut then they stay locked.

I believe most mag locks should fail in a locked state, though. In other words, if there is a power cut then they stay locked.

It's an electromagnet though, no electricity no magnetisation. Good for safety too, imagine being inside a bike room and a fire breaks out in the building, the electricity is cut and you're locked in...

no need for a hollywood-style powercut to open a magnetic door lock.
you can do it with a big enough strong magnet, it will pop the door right open.
absolutely instant and really easy.
source - me, watching the feds doing it out my window.

I reckon that's exactly why these doors are all secured solely by a magnet, these property developers have tons of red tape for fire safety so it's by far the easiest (and cheapest) solution.

There's 2 types of magnetic locks, though - fail safe and fail secure. Fail safe is open if there's a power cut. Fail secure has a physical obstruction if the power fails.

When I asked about the bike store to the block of flats where I used to live, the managing agent assured me it was a fail secure lock. Thinking about it a bit more in the context of fire safety, I am fairly sure they'd have just been lying to me, in hindsight!

Edinburgh...

Edit: Apologies for format. On phone and couldn't tell it wasn't something sensible

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My 10-month old Vitus Nucleus 27.5+ VR got taken from the “secure” bike storage in our block that I’ve also had two (locked) wheels taken from in the past. Stratford, E20.

It was locked with a Fagh chain and a krypto mini as pictured. They cut the chain, no sign of the d-lock. Could have been any time in the past few weeks, maybe longer ago even.

Has Time Atacs and a Lezyne bottle cage but otherwise stock. It had a unique sticker on the seat tube that looks like a 531 decal so that may be there. I think I took a couple of stickers off the Suntour fork as well.

Any leads appreciated.

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