Stolen bike found on Ebay

Angry_Fanboy

geri1965 wrote: »

I'm advocating winning the bike at auction and turning up with the police. Nothing illegal! 50 miles doesn't seem that far to me, if I had a custom built bike that meant a lot to me I wouldn't let a mere 50 miles get in the way of getting it back.

Is this the way the police operate then?

You call them, tell them to meet you at a particular address and a given time, they take what could be a person's property and hand it over to you?

I'd have imagined that the process was a little more complex than that.

rossireps

if someone stole mine id go the other end of country to get it back. i had one stolen outside shop and was devasted .

custardy

purcel wrote: »

My hubby's bike has been stolen about 4 months ago from his workplace. Police report completed, the local police just told us we have no chances of recovering it, as they are usually stolen for scrap metal.
Yesterday evening my hubby was just looking through Ebay and ... surprise!! His bike for sale !!! It is listed about 50 miles away from us and it is definitely our stolen one as it was custom made! there's no other the same! We have contacted the local pd, given the details, but i have read that Ebay can take 15 days to release seller's details, by that time the bike will be sold:(

Now, I have read somewhere that you can bid on it and go and collect with some mates, but due to the distance it is not an option for us.
I was hoping someone else has been in the same situation and the police helped them recover their bike? Thank you.

create a new account with false address
put a large bid in
get the win
then you can get the details for collection

spacey2012

I would follow the advice above, once its gone, so has any evidence it was yours.
You need to lock down the bike to the present location, a high price will get the greed buds flowing

surfboard2

I hope your husband gets his bike back.

Do let us know of the outcome.

My brother had his bike stolen last year and whilst i checked ebay for the first week or so, i didn't think to check after that.

The_ICT_Engineer

If the frame was custom built, the frame builder will have a record of both the buyer and their measurements plus all the fittings added.
If you do have a expensive bike, get it data tagged. http://datatag.co.uk/bicycles.php

undetterred

Angry_Fanboy wrote: »

What are you advocating?

Grow a set and go find out for sure that its the bike.

dizzy_lizzie

Something similar happened to a farmer recently. Here's what he did link

sham63

dizzy_lizzie wrote: »

Something similar happened to a farmer recently. Here's what he did link

He initially reported the theft to Lancashire police but lost patience when they had not tracked the thief down, and decided to do some digging for himself.


During the raid officers found items worth around £15,000, including two expensive mountain bikes, that had been stolen from more than a dozen West Lancashire farms.

purcel

Asking if it's ok to pop round to see is a good idea but i do not want to raise suspicion. ideally will be for the request to come from someone in the same county as the seller or nearby, but not my town.
I didn't had a chance to chase up the police yesterday but i will do it tonight when i came back from work.

I have also sent a message on ebay to someone who has bought a bike from the seller asking if they can help, but i'm not holding my hopes high.

Bidding and going with the police is not currently an option as my car is off road atm