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@northerndave
Here’s s little story about my nicked bike which you might all find interesting….
So, it got nicked from the side street outside Condor on Friday night after the Rapha sale, obviously I was super pissed as you can imagine. It’s my pride and joy and takes me home over Crystal Palace twice a day (btw it’s not a fixie, so if you hate gears look away now, ha ha).
Police report went in straight away. It’s a custom build so was able to list all the components brands, colours and the lot. Didn’t have the frame number, but did have a datatag inside the frame which I got the details of from the previous owner.
Held very little hope of getting it back as you can imagine.
Went down Brick Lane on Sunday and although there was as much obvious selling of nicked bikes as there always has been, mine wasn’t there. Seeing all the shit there was really depressing actually.
No luck, started to get the insurance on the go but being a tight northerner I’d opted for £200 excess which made the claim a bit of a pain.
Monday comes, and one of you guys has actually seen the bike being nicked by a kid on Friday night, so I let the police know that there was a potential witness.
I’d been checking Ebay and Gumtree just in case the fool tried to sell it whole. Amazingly the dick did. No picture but he described the exact mix of components that made it stand out so much. He was asking for £250 – cheeky shit.
Passed this info onto the police thinking it was a done deal, get the kid trying to sell the bike and I get it back. And here’s the rub – they said: “we don’t really know what to do in this situation”. You can probably imagine the stunned silence from me. “don’t know what to do” isn’t that what they’re trained in for Christ’s sake?
After a very, very long conversation around the insanity of them not being able to help me out I took it into my own hands. Phoned the guy pretending to want to buy it, nice chap - he dropped it to £245!. Told him that it was my bike and that I thought he’d stolen it and that I wanted it back that day and that I wasn’t paying him £250. He initially denied it then I listed off every component and told him it was tagged (little did he know it was useless)
Just to say, I don’t in any way think that paying scally for your own bike is the right thing to do, but I offered him £100 to get it back and arranged to meet him. Most people at work wanted to come with me to beat the living crap out of him. The police advised not to do it because he might stab me!
Decided I’d take my chances and although it makes me sick, I got my pride and joy back for less than the insurance excess and way less than a new bike. No fuss, no fucking about.
So here’s the lesson:
Police are useless at dealing with this kinda stuff, they either can’t bothered or can’t move quick enough.
DataTags are useless – the police can’t read them
Brick lane is still hot with nicked bikes, so go down there if you've lost a bike
Get your frame number and hope the crims don't grind it off
Paying crims is sickening but, you’re on your own and I felt I had to do it.