Bike Register - how many of you use it?

sparkins1972
sparkins1972 Posts: 252
edited September 2010 in Road beginners
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?

Comments

  • dmch2
    dmch2 Posts: 731
    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)
    2010 Trek 1.5 Road - swissstop green, conti GP4000S
    2004 Marin Muirwoods Hybrid
  • sonny73
    sonny73 Posts: 2,203
    I registered my Spesh with Specialized when I bought it and the serial number is on my bike insurance too.
  • 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
    Pross Posts: 40,490
    Are you sure you aren't just checking out whose bikes are safest to nick? :wink:
  • Baaaargghhh, I would have got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids...