Bike Register - how many of you use it?

sparkins1972

I was lying in bed last night trying to think of ways of escaping the rat race or at least supplementing my income. Having just purchased a 'new' secondhand bike, i got thinking about how you can go about checking if a bike is stolen or not - given the tens of thousands of bikes that are stolen each year (131000 per year acording to Home Office Stats) I decided that there must be some way of setting up something similar to an HPI check on a car - I went to sleep dreaming of my first million only to find that something called Bikeregister.co.uk already exists.

Given the £000s worth of bikes that are discussed on here alone, I just wondered how many of you actually have your bike either registered, or even keep a record of frame number etc? If you were buying second hand would you pay a couple of quid to check if that bike was registered as stolen / lost etc?

dmch2

I'd never heard of it. Or thought about such a thing...

(I wrote down my serial number because Trek wanted it when I registered my new bike)

sonny73

I registered my Spesh with Specialized when I bought it and the serial number is on my bike insurance too.

sparkins1972

Thanks for the answers - the thing I was thinking about is that since I bought my bike second hand, I realised I had no way of knowing if the bike was stolen or not. Had there been a service whereby bike users could register their frame number etc and I could have paid say a fiver to verify if it was registered as stolen before paying, it would have given me peace of mind. Given that I spent £900 on the bike an extra few quid to check that kind of thing would have made no difference to me. I am guessing I would have no comeback if the bike was stolen and somehow recovered by the police = £££ out of pocket

Just a thought - I am guessing Theo Paphitis / Duncan Bannatyne etc would declare themselves out!

Pross

Are you sure you aren't just checking out whose bikes are safest to nick?

sparkins1972

Baaaargghhh, I would have got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids...