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Bike and bus in Oxford (CC licensed image by tejvanphotos:Flickr)Bike shop slammed for selling on stolen bike
A bike shop that sold a stolen bike on has been criticised by its owner, who faced a seven month battle to get it back.
Ashley Thorpe’s racing bike was stolen from St Clements in Oxford, and by chance he happened upon it five months later locked up by Oxford International College in London Place.
He put his lock on it and called the police, but while he was waiting its new owner came back and said he had bought it from Cycle King on Cowley Road.
Police took the bike away, saying it was now a civil matter, and the bike was only returned to Mr Thorpe last week – almost a year after it was stolen.
He told the Oxford Mail: "Police have stopped their investigation.
"The reason the store gave for their sale was that someone had brought the bike in to be fixed and never came back for it but I don't believe any legitimate business would decide to sell a bike on based on that."
"I only paid about £200 for my bike but I'd had it for three years and had modified it for my needs. It was a commuter bike but I also used it for triathlons.
"This is probably my biggest hobby and it was awful having to replace it."
Cycle King Oxford branch manager, Keith Gosling, said: "Somebody brought the bike into us for repair and then never came back to collect it despite numerous calls.
"We have a policy where, if a bike isn't collected after three months, then we sell it to recover costs.
"We had no reason to believe it was stolen."
Mr Gosling added: "The man who owned the bike now has it back and the chap who bought it from us has had his money back.
"The only ones who have lost out are us because of the money we spent doing work on it."
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25 comments
NO STORY HERE
No mention of the owner recording the frame number, reporting it stolen to the Police initially or reporting the theft and frame number to the stolen bike register.
What have the shop done wrong ?
Who’s “Slamming” the shop ?
Kind of annoying BS that bike shops don’t need as they try and stay competitive and survive on the High Street.
Very poor , Road.cc, you need to improve
The reaction in Oxford when the story first appeared in local media was " I bet the cycle shop is Cycle King ". It was. They are the local purveyor of BSOs, and it would appear, other people's stuff.
Where do people check ? I'm not aware of a national register ? And yes if I was buying anything significant I'd want to be sure it was legit. Turning a blind eye just because it's a bargain makes you little better than the thief.
Like all shops check if something is stolen before they work on it...Halfords, Kwik Fit........I dont think its reasonable, a priceless antique perhaps!
How many on here have bought something off Gumtree or Ebay? Did we all check it's serial numbers with the police after purchase? Nah, didn't think so.
I recently got a camera lens off Gumtree and when I went to collect, the bloke was nice enough but the estate didn't match my expectations for that level of stuff. The lens was worth more than most people's cars that I could see. I did think were did he get the money for this gear from as he was moaning on about his ailments and not being able to get up during the day.
Cool story bro, better with a conclusion though.
I planted the lens in my garden and when I woke up there was a giant beanstalk reaching to the clouds. I went up it, stole a giant bicycle, came down and chopped the beanstalk down and took the bike to local shop for a service but forgot to pick it up. When I finally remembered they'd sold it.
The end.
So you managed to PROPEL your way up the beanstalk and DEFY the law by stealing a Giant bicycle but to little AVAIL as you forgot to pick it up from the LBS?
(Sorry, I could not resist)
Bike shop slammed for selling on stolen bike
Please don't use the word 'slammed' again, it sounds like I'm reading The Sun
Thank you in advance
Purveyor of velocipedes sold to the public at retail prices censured for having peddled (geddit?) spoils of two-wheeler purloinment.
I don't think the bike shop did anything wrong. If they had checked the frame number after repairing it and before selling it, then they would have lost the chance to reclaim their repair costs, so the more logical time to check frame numbers would be after cleaning, but before working on the bike. We could demand that all bike shops check bikes against a register, but that's surely a task for police and as a society, we've decided to save money by not having so many police.
Don't blame bike shops for the lack of police.
You know how that sounds right? It sounds like you're suggesting that as long as a bike shop doesn't loose out then it's ok for them the facilite the sale of stolen goods. Also, in this case, since the shop had to refund the customer anyway, so they probably lost a lot more money then the intial repair cost them in the first place
Not at all. Handling stolen goods is a crime, so it's in the bike shops interest to not do any work on a stolen bike. If a bike shop has already done repair work, then it's a reasonable assumption that they don't think the bike is stolen. It's their policy to sell un-collected bikes so they're not doing anything suspicious.
In this instance, the bike shop would have been better off if they had checked before working on the bike. Maybe it didn't occur to them.
You might think that it would be easy to check a frame number but my ancient Muddy Fox has the frame number on the bottom bracket shell, under the cable guide. To find the number you have to release both cables and unscrew the guide plate. Doubt any shop would do that.
Surely the solution to such issues would be a national stolen bikes register.
I imagine your register would be rather like this for most cases (picture by David Shrigley):
IMG_1364.JPG
This has reminded me to take a pic of the frame number on one of my bikes - just realised I didn't have a record of it anywhere.
Every bike sold should be registered and traceable.
I wonder if the owner had included the frame number when he reported it stolen?
IMO, if the bike shop checked the frame number on Bike Register (or similar database) and it wasn't listed as stolen, they're in the clear. If they didn't check the number, even if it had been reported, they are liable. Simple as that.
Didn't know that bike shops need to check registration for every bike that comes into the shop for repair or upgrades. It will add a lot of admin work and extra massive cost for the bike shops.
Good idea to have the bike shop check and probably a lot of stolen bikes will be recovered that way but I don't see this is viable in reality.
AFAIK, they don't check frame numbers.
However, this was an 'abandoned' bike they had made the decision to sell on. It would have taken under a minute to flip the bike over to note the number and enter it online.
If it then came up stolen, the headline would've been, 'Cycle King helps recover stolen bike' rather than concerns about dealing in stolen property.
Though maybe there should be some thought into a system of entering frame numbers for any bikes they do substantial work to, before they start? It would protect the bike shop from being out of pocket, which they would've been in this case in any event. One minute. To save possible hundreds.
Also places onus back on the owner to record their bike details properly, helps out the police to return property, etc.
The Bike Register BikeChecker is a FREE service so the only cost would be the time it takes to take down that one extra piece of information when you take down the customers name, address, contact number etc. and the time it would take someone to check the bike frame number later (or just the 2 minutes it would take to note it and check it themselves at that later stage)
I think this would be a great idea and potentially greatly reduce bike thefts if stolen bikes were unable to use bike shops?
Or am I missing something?
(I am not saying that the bike shop did anything wrong, but now the debate has been opened up I can see the potential for a better way of processing bikes brought in for repair for the greater good going forward)
I'm with the shop on this.
What would the original owner suggest the bike shop so ? I think he owes them an apology.
As hard as I know, that's a common practice for bike shops. If a bike is handed in for repair and the shop put out money on parts and the bike isn't collected after day, 10 months plus. The shop will sell it on at a reduced cost, to simply claim back the money that was initially paid out to it's suppliers.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with that practice.
Yep, routine practice in bike shops, I've done it myself when I worked in the industry. Bit of a non-story. Glad I had a happy ending but certainly not the fault of the shop.
Sorry but I can't see what the bike shop did wrong, they did work on the bike for what they thought was the owner and sold it on when not paid for the work. Was there a sticker on it saying "stolen from Ashley Thorpe" that they ignored, if not then this is a storm in a teacup by an attention seeker who is seeking to penalise someone who acted in good faith.
Sometimes the law is a twat, but it's the law.