Bike stolen today...

[yellowjack]

I'm extremely pee'd off right now.

Mostly at scummy bike thieves. Then at the utter plums running the country and pandering to spineless johnny wetpants types over Covid. Relevance? Because if they pulled their collective thumbs out of their arses my son wouldn't have to be working at Greggs, but instead he'd be in Japan teaching English.

Oh, and also at Dorset Police, who seem far more interested in asking gender/sexuality/race/religion type questions than they are in the details of what was stolen. I'm honestly not expecting much at all from them right now. My son dialed 101, and we also reported it through the police website.

The bike? It's "only" a 12 year old GT Avalanche. It cost £305 back then. It's not so much it's value, but the total inconvenience for my lad. It was locked up with an "armoured" cable lock, ABUS, rubber cover over metal segments, over a central cable. 'Sold Secure Bronze'. My son recovered a few bits from where his bike had been and it was in small pieces. He'd locked it up where he could see it from the shop he works in, but some time around the end of his shift when he was cleaning up and getting changed to come home, etc, it went missing.

I feel really fked over by this. It was a scruffy old bike with a rusty suspension stantion. It was only used for errands and commuting by the two of us, and kept on the road (albeit with the suspension locked out) precisely because it looked "a bit crap". The worst part is that he's now faced with a 40 minute walk instead of a 15 minute (max) ride. And with 5.30 am starts that adds an even crappier early start to an already crappy early start. It's not even as though he can afford to buy a new bike with his wages, as he hasn't been working there more than a couple of weeks. And that's if there are even any cheap bikes out there to buy. I won't let him commute on a "nice" bike because a) we can't afford to lose another one, and b) we'd need to be spending a big chunk of money we haven't got on heftier locks.

The Greggs he works at is small, so no chance of keeping a bike on the shop's property.

So, if anyone sees a scrote on a black 2008 GT Avalanche 3.0 with Crud Catcher mudguards, a silver coloured bottle cage (snapped), and an old Cateye wired cycle computer which was stolen at approximately 6.00 pm to 6.30 pm from outside Greggs on Christchurch Road, Boscombe (Bournemouth), please either shoot them in the face and look after the bike until I can collect it, or, alternatively, just follow the scrote and pass me the address.

I suppose I should keep an eye out for it on eBay, and other "marketplace" apps, but I don't know where to begin really, and don't want to let this consume too much time and emotion.

I don't even know if it's worth claiming for on insurance (£150 excess) or whether the lock would be up to some mythical standard they'd insist on. Do home insurance policies even cover stuff like a bike that gets locked up in the street?


And why it's most annoying? I was attached to that bike. I rode my first MTB races on it. My son is attached to it because he managed to do three years at Reading Uni and not get it nicked. I'd ask "why can't we have nice things without some scrote stealing them" but it wasn't even that nice. But it was bought with our hard-earned cash, and it was ours. So I'd really like to find the scumbag who took it and really take my anger and frustration out on them...



ETA: A photo of "the beast" in question. Complete with an extra mudguard bodged as a chain/front derailleur protector, and the bike parking tag (on the seatpost) from the Excel Centre when I booked in for the 2019 RideLondon event...

Edited by yellowjack on Wednesday 2nd June 02:20

[Donbot]

More trouble than it's worth for the police.

Watched this the other day which was interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48V9Xtpgq9I

[Hrimfaxi]

I feel for you and your son, fking sucks. I had mine nicked about 10 meters from where I was sitting in a pub.

Police aren't interested - you'll only get a crime reference and an email to say they can't be arsed.

The only option is to check all the usual places, or use findthatbike.co.uk - it'll search through most of them in one go.

I never did find mine, but was fully ready to go and ...ermm... "buy" back my bike, if I ever saw it for sale.

[breamster]

Hrimfaxi said:

I feel for you and your son, fking sucks. I had mine nicked about 10 meters from where I was sitting in a pub.

Police aren't interested - you'll only get a crime reference and an email to say they can't be arsed.

The only option is to check all the usual places, or use findthatbike.co.uk - it'll search through most of them in one go.

I never did find mine, but was fully ready to go and ...ermm... "buy" back my bike, if I ever saw it for sale.

It isn't that the Police "can't be arsed." They are overstretched and can't look into ever "minor" crime. I know a few coppers and they would love to catch some of these types of criminals. I'm sure there are some local BIBs who will confirm this but it is shocking how few police we have on duty at any given time.

Anyway, I'm local (very ish) and will of course keep an eye open but the chances of spotting it are virtually nil. Knowing that area I am not surprised it went not that that is much consolation. I wouldn't have thought it was worth claiming on the insurance.

Bike crime is upsetting and disruptive and seemingly on the increase. Yet bizarrely when I i posted on another cycling forum about getting proof of ownership when buying a used bike I was criticised by other cyclists for being too fussy!

[Hugo Stiglitz]

I wouldn't lock either of my two bikes ANYWHERE or leave them in a garage or shed.

I'd feel sick and angry like yourself.

As soon as it gets a puncture no doubt it'll be dumped and ultimately wind up in the local police back yard.

Give it a month and call round. Worth a try?

[Zetec-S]

Sorry to hear this, I understand how you feel.

Many years ago we used to live on Christchurch Road (not far from the Iford roundabout). My wife bought me a new MTB for my birthday, nothing fancy but special for me because it was the first "decent" bike I'd owned. Within a couple of weeks it was stolen from our garden shed, other than a crime number for insurance that's all we heard.

Keep an eye out on the local markets (facebook, gumtree, ebay etc), you never know...

[yellowjack]

Hugo Stiglitz said:

I wouldn't lock either of my two bikes ANYWHERE or leave them in a garage or shed.

I'd feel sick and angry like yourself.

As soon as it gets a puncture no doubt it'll be dumped and ultimately wind up in the local police back yard.

Give it a month and call round. Worth a try?

Not a luxury we can afford though. My son was supposed to be in Japan right now, teaching English, as he learned Japanese at Uni, alongside his Zoology degree. Then, with lockdown, the start date got put back further and further, and it is still very much "up in the air". He ended up on Universal Credit looking for a job, any job. A couple of weeks ago he got one at Greggs. But lockdowns, etc, screwed up learning to drive for him too. He was well on the way when things came to a grinding halt. Now, getting the ball rolling again is hard "because backlog" and "because finances". The irony is, with Greggs, that he doesn't have what you'd call a regular pattern of shifts, so booking driving lessons now that he has the money is difficult to arrange around work. Catch 22.

All this situation does is drive more people away from cycle commuting and shopping by bike, and toward driving to work and to the shops. How can a bicycle be regarded as a reliable means of moving people about in large numbers if it cannot be reliably found where you locked it up when home time comes. As for police resources being scarce? Well yes, they are. But I very much doubt (eg) 2000 bikes get stolen by 2000 separate scrotes. So if the cops invested some time and effort into investigating a few bike thefts they might well discover that they can "solve" many cases of bike theft, confiscate the tools used, and gain valuable intelligence into where stolen bikes are sold on, and quite likely intelligence on many other areas of criminality too. But they won't, because they seem to treat each offence as minor in itself. "Thinking small" if you will. What is deeply irritating is that Dorset police seemed to have manpower and resources aplenty to arrest people for sitting on benches on the prom, and to issue fines for (not actually) breaking Covid lockdown "laws". Not so much to actually get in amongst some real crime. It might "only" be a cheap, old bicycle to anyone else. But it was my boys daily transport. And it's no less a crime than if it had been an expensive car stolen from a car park. It's an arse-ache for him, and replacing the bike will take time, because we'll also have to buy expensive locks, and it's so much more likely that a newer, shinier replacement would disappear the same way.

I've asked the boy to speak to his manager to see if his bike could be stowed somewhere on the shop property, but it's a small shop unit. There is a bike hire scheme here in Bournemouth, so he can download their app and see how he goes with a hire bike to get there and back, but that relies on there being bikes in the right places when he needs one, and we saw none locally this morning. And often the ones we do see are damaged, usually deliberately. It seems that you just can't have nice things anymore.

Going back to that bit in bold? It's OK for me, I'm a leisure cyclist. The ride IS the reason I cycle. I don't go to a place intending to lock my bike up and do anything else. But my boy? He's stuck with cycling to/from work for the foreseeable future. And for such a short journey that is fairly traffic-free for the most part, it would make no sense to drive there even if he had a car, because parking on roads is in short supply and council owned car parks are expensive. He'd be spending more (all in) running a car than he was earning, I reckon...

Edited by yellowjack on Wednesday 2nd June 10:14

[Hugo Stiglitz]

Oh I agree with you wholeheartedly. I love cycling to the shops, it'd much easier just jumping on my bike. Yesterday I rode to work (2-1am) and its 11 miles each way coming back down a deserted converted rail track. I'm very lucky that my work is completely secure and I can put my bike indoors.

If I was faced with a rack outside no way would I even consider it. How many people are in the same position?

A lot of shops locally are small and allow my bike inside, how many don't and would you blame them?

I do a weekly pub run 30miles away and the pubs also allow my bike inside.

How many pubs can't as its not practical or safe?

I walk or drive to my local supermarket. I've seen Bromptons chained up outside!

They say 1/4million miles of journeys in Manchester each year are under 2km I'm length yet health issues in Manchester are massive.

But you can't leave anything anywhere without it being stolen or stripped.

The police can not even get close to bike crime. They have to triage what they can deal with. People leave their windows open in summer months at night and expensive cars are stolen from said houses- who do you deal with first?

[firemunki]

Hugo Stiglitz said:

People leave their windows open in summer months at night and expensive cars are stolen from said houses- who do you deal with first?

Obviously biased here, but I'd sort out the bike theft from town centres, railway stations and the like. My, possible somewhat shakey, reasoning is for years I had to use a bike to commute for exactly the same reasons as the op's son: a car was an unaffordable goal, and cars will all have 3rd party and theft insurance. Yes, it's a bit of a PITA to claim and sort out new car but a £200 commuting bike won't be insured.

It will only get worse as more large cities and towns start to improve cycle infrastructure and introduce more LTNs and clean air areas. You can't push folk out of cars if the solution is bikes but not make your investment safer.

[Dog Star]

Hugo Stiglitz said:

I wouldn't lock either of my two bikes ANYWHERE or leave them in a garage or shed.

I had my garage burgled seven years ago and a LOT of stuff stolen, including two motorbikes. Nobody will get in there again without ram raiding the place and even then they’d need a Stihl saw to get the chains off.

However I’m so massively paranoid about theft of my stuff it’s crazy. No matter where I go I literally keep my MTB or motorbikes under my direct sight. Anywhere else and it’s multiple big Pragmasis chains. I’ve a new Canyon eMTB and that’s in my dining room.

I really don’t understand insurance companies who offer cover on cycles stored in wooden sheds - it’s insane and they are simply not secure. Motorbike insurers don’t classify wooden sheds as secure, and a lot of cycles these days cost more than motorbikes and are a lot easier to remove and dispose of. Madness.

OP if you do replace it then take a look on the Security for bikes website at their DIB D locks. Crazy value for money, best bike security in the business and realistically nobody is stealing your bike with that on unless they’re rocking up with a big battery grinder or gas axe.

[jesusbuiltmycar]

Sorry to hear that Yellowjack...

Its worth checking the "Cash Converter" style shops in Boscombe, Winton & Moordown...

[Man-At-Arms]

firemunki said:

Yes, it's a bit of a PITA to claim and sort out new car but a £200 commuting bike won't be insured..

Might be covered under home contents insurance
I’m with Admiral and my MTB is covered automatically as it’s under £400.
But had to get additional for my Cannondale Synapse 105

Also take photos of serial number (normally under bottom bracket) and add details to bikeregister.com

[sutoka]

Police are far too busy punching members of the public for catching them driving while using a mobile phone than they are about investigation crime.

Should have told them it was a pink bike with pride stickers you might have got a different response.

[yellowjack]

sutoka said:

Police are far too busy punching members of the public for catching them driving while using a mobile phone than they are about investigation crime.

Should have told them it was a pink bike with pride stickers you might have got a different response.

You mock, but the report was 6 pages long. One whole page was devoted to questions about gender identity and race, etc, before we even got to put in details of the crime. There has to be a balance, and at the moment it seems that public services (not limited to the police) spend far too much of their time and money carrying out population surveys, and too little time responding to crime.

But then people only have themselves to blame in many ways. I drove from Bournemouth to Farnborough and back on Bank Holiday Monday evening. The outward journey was an old-school nav-ex on 'A' and 'B' roads up through Verwood, Godshill, Romsey, Stockbridge, Winchester, Basingstoke, etc, to avoid heavy traffic that began at the end of the spur road out of Bournemouth. The return trip was down the M3/M27/A31 against the main flow of traffic heading inland. So I had a smooth journey, but people heading the other way clearly weren't. There were SIX incidents getting police attention, many of them requiring two cars. Plus another three police cars seen under blue lights on the way to incidents. And one car stranded dangerously in lane 2 on the A338 out of Bournemouth with police busy with incidents (a few miles) either side of them.

So those who drive like Muppets don't really have much in the way of a leg to stand on when police are "too stretched" to attend a burglary or other property theft from them. None of these incidents appeared to be particularly significant in and of itself, but the number of them, combined with heavy holiday traffic, meant the roads were badly jammed up pretty much from the bottom of the M3 to Basingstoke, and heavy for the rest of the route. I'd never felt so smug about my encyclopedic knowledge of the geography of Dorset and Hampshire. Much of which has been learned on a bicycle...

[stargazer30]

Op. If you do go the new bike route, I’d suggest a cheap but stupidly heavy and thick motor bike chain lock. It will weigh a ton at 8kg but you can leave the lock at his works rather than carrying it. I use one to lock my ebike in the garage and even an angle grinder would have a hard time on it.

Even so though it’s crazy at the moment. The scrotes are cutting the frames as the parts are worth as much as the bikes due to COVID.

[julian64]

Don't want to be depressing but there isn't a chain made that wouldn't fall apart in the presence of even a really cheap battery powered angle grinder.

A really cheap chain is just as good as a really expensive one because it works on the 'bear' analogy.

To get away from a bear you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the guy standing next to you.

[Dog Star]

julian64 said:

Don't want to be depressing but there isn't a chain made that wouldn't fall apart in the presence of even a really cheap battery powered angle grinder.

A really cheap chain is just as good as a really expensive one because it works on the 'bear' analogy.

To get away from a bear you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the guy standing next to you.

Not true at all. Some of my chains need a bigger disc mains grinder to get through. And even the smaller one is, I think, uncroppable. Keep that off the ground or a D lock you can’t Jack apart and you’ll be fine, assuming you’re not in London or somewhere the angle grinder gang are.

You are correct about the bear analogy though.

Top flight locks don’t need to be expensive - the Dib D lock I mentioned above is about fifty quid.

[Hugo Stiglitz]

sutoka said:

Police are far too busy punching members of the public for catching them driving while using a mobile phone than they are about investigation crime.

Should have told them it was a pink bike with pride stickers you might have got a different response.

You have absolutely no idea what a typical police unit does in one shift do you?

[Dromedary66]

breamster said:

I'm sure there are some local BIBs who will confirm this but it is shocking how few police we have on duty at any given time.

There was plenty of them when they were accosting people walking in two's in a park, or sitting on a bench over the last year.

[yellowjack]

Dromedary66 said:

breamster said:

I'm sure there are some local BIBs who will confirm this but it is shocking how few police we have on duty at any given time.

There was plenty of them when they were accosting people walking in two's in a park, or sitting on a bench over the last year.

Yes. And that was annoying. But like I pointed out a few posts up, they were snowed under on Monday evening sorting out traffic snarl-ups on motorways. And in slow traffic, in my experience, many of these minor bumps, and to be frank, much of the delay in the first place, is caused by dimwit after dimwit trying to swap lanes constantly looking for an advantage that really isn't there to be found. It boils our piss, causes huge traffic jams, puts our insurance premiums up unnecessarily, and drags plenty of police officers who clearly aren't Roads Policing specialists away from "real crime" to fix a mess conjured up by a few idiots who can't play nice with others.

I'm as annoyed as anyone is with the (apparent) lack of police effort in this particular matter. My son has had a response from them today too. They want HIM to go around trying to get CCTV footage from nearby shops. Which I doubt they'll give out even if they have it. Not to a spotty 'Erbert what works for Greggs anyway.

What the hell are all these CCTV cameras for if they don't prevent crime in the first place, or help fight it after the fact? All these 'Police, Camera, Action' type shows love to show us CCTV control room operators at work "keeping us all safe" but I think it's all a colossal waste of time, effort, and resources if police officers aren't able (or willing?) to retrieve these images and use them to investigate crimes...

My boy says he will trawl around some shops and ask about CCTV after his shift tomorrow. We shall see how this plays out, but I have little real expectation of getting this bike back.