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Where do stolen bikes go?

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Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#221

Post by throwaway049 »

adastra22 wrote: post #219
ozim wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not hear about VanMoof earlier but my buddy called police (Amsterdam area of course) once when he found his bike and he wanted to be good citizen so he did not want to just steal it back from some backyard. Well police helped him recover the bike without arresting anyone and told him next time he should just steal it back and don't bother them.

How is taking your own property back being a bad citizen?

I think he intended to be a good citizen by leading the police to some bike thieves.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#222

Post by acadapter »

adastra22 wrote: post #219
ozim wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not hear about VanMoof earlier but my buddy called police (Amsterdam area of course) once when he found his bike and he wanted to be good citizen so he did not want to just steal it back from some backyard. Well police helped him recover the bike without arresting anyone and told him next time he should just steal it back and don't bother them.

How is taking your own property back being a bad citizen?

In some countries it might be illegal to disturb someone's possession of something, as a general rule, regardless of legitimate ownership.

For example, in Sweden, if it's been more than 24 hours, it's illegal to do it on your own.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#223

Post by pprotas »

hgomersall wrote: post #214
pprotas wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This brand is known for bikes that break very quickly. The bikes are good, but don’t last. They are very expensive and the replacement parts are too. The VanMoof or Tweakers forums are filled with users talking about the repairs the did this week to their bike, or that they send their bike back since it broke the week they bought it.

Without knowing anything about VanMoof, I'm always (more than I'd ideally like) doing some repairs on whichever bike I'm generally riding. Same for our car, which barely gets driven at all. It seems mechanical stuff needs repairing. Maybe VanMoof riders talk about it more in the forum. Most companies don't offer that...?

It’s definitely possible that there is a bias; users that have perfectly working VanMoofs don’t complain on the forums and just ride their bikes.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#224

Post by jodiug »

bckygldstn wrote: post #206
bogomipz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The videos are interesting. Will VanMoof go anywhere in Europe for you then to recover these then? I see Strasbourg and Stockholm in addition to the Netherlands. Any insight into how the pricing works for recovery?

From [1] it looks like * You pay $400 for 3 years of coverage. * Must have the bike locked and file a police report. * They can choose whether or not to attempt recovery. * If they choose not to, or fail to recover the bike, they'll replace it. * Up to 3 replacements are covered in the 3 years. So it's really just theft insurance but they can attempt to recover low-hanging fruit. In wonder what their attempted recove…

Not VanMoof, but I worked in the project team doing the theft recovery platform for Gazelle. We managed to recover literally almost every bike, and the recovery rate was 140% because we often found more than just 1 bike reported stolen.

It really worked unexpectedly well, I've heard a lot of skepticism and I don't know how things are at VanMoof but if the will is there it really works

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#225

Post by throwaway049 »

latency-guy2 wrote: post #209
mycall wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it unethical to buy a "cheap" replacement bicycle if your previous one was stolen?

No? What are you trying to get at? I assume there's something you have on your mind that I'm missing to understand why there would be any type of moral quandary here.

I take cheap to mean stolen in this case.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#226

Post by distances »

fsckboy wrote: post #190
mycall wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it unethical to buy a "cheap" replacement bicycle if your previous one was stolen?

it's no less ethical than buying a "cheap" bicycle to begin with

It is unethical if you know it's likely stolen. That's what the parent meant with a "cheap" bike.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#227

Post by gambiting »

winter_blue wrote: post #163
denton-scratch wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I considered warning the WM police that I was going to rock up at the thieves' front door, and ask them nicely to give me back my property. And warning the cops that I expected a breach of the peace to occur, becauase I thought it was likely they would beat me up. Failing to take measures to prevent a breach of the peace that they had been warned about would be bad publicity, at best. But I'm not inclined to ta…

How hard would it be be to get a gun (even a hunting rifle) or other weapons in the UK? If you did tell the police that you were going to take the law into your own hands, what would happen?

1) takes about 3 months and an interview with a police officer, than you can buy whatever you want(handguns are not allowed under any circumstances though)

2) you'd be arrasted, or at the very least told that if you do that, you will be in trouble.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#228

Post by unwind »

convolvatron wrote: post #143
agumonkey wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but it requires heavy tooling and more time. Most robbers want cheap shots.

this is patently not true. maybe titanium is gummy enough to give one trouble? but any steel that isn't brittle enough to shatter when you look at it is going to be trivial to cut with an abrasive disk and a battery powered grinder. if the chain is 1/2" instead of 1/4", it will take an extra minute maybe.

I understand the power of angle grinders (so much that I'm still hesitant to buy one), but I object to a battery-powered angle grinder _not_ being "more tools". It has to be at least one level above what the Average Bike Thief carries around, hasn't it? They are certainly not stealthy.

Of course, it's quite possible that the Average Bike Thief in Amsterdam is a well-organized criminal-for-hire kind of person, doing surgical strikes against the most valuable bikes and so on (as is often the case with car theft, afaik). Then perhaps an angle grinder is just standard Day 1 equipment.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#229

Post by Nition »

blamazon wrote: post #47
isoprophlex wrote: post #10

Once I lost a bike that was parked right outside my house. Couple of days later I saw a guy ride around on my bike! I sprinted over and somewhat aggressively yelled "you're on my bike, buddy!" He got off, very politely handed me back my bike, and thanked me for letting him borrow it. Almost made me feel like I was the bad guy in the situation. Anyway I guess in some cases, a stolen bike doesn't go far at all.

I had a ratty bike in college that I never bothered to lock to the bike racks, because I had bought it very cheaply and I had insufficient money to repair it properly. Almost everything that could be broken while still remaining technically rideable, was broken. One day - gone! I breathed a sigh of relief and went about my day. Two years pass. I'm walking to class one day on the same campus and I see a very similar l…

I was almost expecting this to end with "...I was so happy that day as I rode my now vastly improved bike home."

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#230

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

adastra22 wrote: post #219
ozim wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not hear about VanMoof earlier but my buddy called police (Amsterdam area of course) once when he found his bike and he wanted to be good citizen so he did not want to just steal it back from some backyard. Well police helped him recover the bike without arresting anyone and told him next time he should just steal it back and don't bother them.

How is taking your own property back being a bad citizen?

It becomes complicated if the new owner has legitimately bought the bike in a second hand store.
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