Finding Your Stolen Bike Online

mossj88

If your bikes just been stolen it is well worth keeping an eye on eBay, Gumtree and PreLoved. Many stolen bikes eventually end up being sold this way sometimes months after the crime.

This is where Find That Bike comes in. It lets you setup an email alert to all 3 at once, in addition you can keep an eye on local sales in a handy gallery.

It covers the whole of the UK and there's no charge for it.

Many Thanks,
John

rillyroy

doesn't work, don't rely on it as I found plenty of newly listed that weren't included in the results from this site

mossj88

Really? could you email me (john@findthatbike.co.uk) some examples and I'll look into it. It can take upto 2 hours to be imported onto our site so could that be it?

I've had no complaints from anyone else.

rillyroy

could well be

I have daily email alerts for Kona, Specialized, Trek Remedy & Klein bikes from ebay & when I got some last week I compared results to yours & there were a few missing. It could well be to do with the delay though.

I'll check tomorrow as this would be an excellent service.

mossj88

I suspect so our ebay feed comes direct from their API so it should be 100% reliable. Gumtree and PreLoved feeds have to be manualy captured so if they change their websites problems can occur.

That said if you find something that doesn't appear on our website after 2 hours please let me know as obviously somethings wrong and I need to fix it asap.

The best alerts I've found come from having only the specific make or model (but not both)...

Best of luck in your search.

ooermissus

Have you had much luck re-uniting people with their bikes?

Also, it would seem possible to start putting together information on suspicious patterns of selling - e.g. loads of bikes being sold from the same mobile number all with a "selling my much loved bike because I am going away to university" justification.

mossj88

I've had a few sucesses, any excess ad revenue is also being put towards other anti bike theft things. Like I'm looking at hiring a PI company to establish where the Brick Lane lot stash their bikes.

I'm going to be coding a new site later in the year that takes a screenshot of each advert, so even if the ad is removed or changed theres still a searchable record.

At the same time as thats happening I'll be looking at a way to establish and highlight dodgy adverts problem is that if a specific website highlights a dodgy ad would you as a thief set about removing all the evidence?

ooermissus

mossj88 wrote:

At the same time as thats happening I'll be looking at a way to establish and highlight dodgy adverts problem is that if a specific website highlights a dodgy ad would you as a thief set about removing all the evidence?

Maybe the thing to do is to start building up dossiers that can be sent to the police on a regular basis. It's a scandal that they don't even crack down on people who make zero effort to hide the fact that they have a nearly new, high end bike to sell every week.

Records of all the adverts could also be used by the police when someone is caught - getting them to ask for past offenses to be taken into consideration etc.

mossj88

I actually tried this method in July as I spotted my own stolen bike and then unpicked a web of around 20 other bikes all currently for sale on Gumtree..

Phoned the cycletask force, they tried to ring the seller who didn't pick up, then said there was nothing more they could do... when I mentioned the other 20 clearly stolen bikes I was told that they don't have the time.

ooermissus

I had exactly the same reaction. It's outrageous. At the least, your data could be used to compile a report for the media on how thieves are able to sell bikes with barely any risk of investigation. Would be good publicity for your site.