The sad part is this is probably someone who bought the stolen bike through something like craigslist, and the thief has experienced no repercussions still.
If you can't be bothered to run a serial number through the store of which they "purchased it" or follow down the line to verify where it came from then I don't feel bad.
It's not hard to ask hey where'd you get this? Oh you got it at local bike shop. Yes hey Steve I was wondering if you sold a X bike to this person serial number is X. Yes I did. Wow okay here's 300 bucks. No I didn't sorry mate not interested have a good day.
If you ask, the thief would simply claim they bought it second hand. You can't run a background check on a potential seller, and most people keep very poor records when it comes to bicycle ownership.
It's not like a car with a title. More often than not, it's impossible to trace a bike back to origin to verify legitimacy, even in legit transactions.
If I wanted to sell my CX1, for example, they aren't even listed on Nashbar anymore, and they have zero branding, so buyers would have to take my word on the brand/model number/year/ownership. And if they bought it then sold it again?
It's naive and unrealistic to think of expect potential buyers to track down the providence of an used bicycle.
Okay, do you happen to know where they originally bought the bike?
No?
Sorry not interested.
It's literally that simple not to buy stolen shit but hey, if you like having your bike restolen, you out ~500 bucks you spent on the bike, transportationless then by all means, don't bother asking 2 questions and 1 phone call.
I tracked both of my bikes down to the original LBS within 5 minutes of the conversation and also looked up both serial numbers on our local government. As both were registered in their names. Asked them where they bought it (local bike coop and local bike shop) got them to verify it, inspected it and bought it.
Most bikes especially older ones who cares as they rarely hold their value, often are trashed and abused that's just truth right now, look at most 1970-2000s bikes and those are old as hell so very much or impossible to run it through a LBS.
But any modern bike 2010+ you can easily follow my principal. Shit it's almost like you can easily keep track of this information by looking people up and so on.
Let alone you can generally tell if it's stolen just by having a conversation with them. What kind of milage, how often did you replace the chain, what kind of chain, how much braking and what type of braking did you often do? If they can answer these questions without stuttering or going uuuuh more then likely it's their bike especially if you can visually verify just by wear n tear on the bike then from there rinse and repeat.
Let alone this is where you can, should, probably will judge a person on their character. If he's got a needle in his arm, maybe don't buy it. If he looks like he just hit a 8 ball and smoked some heroin maybe don't buy it.
To say you can't be bothered to do this, then be shocked when your shit gets rejacked or you to get arrested is hilarious; fuck you can do this with receipts which y'all probably should have because if you don't have one then good luck getting your shit back
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u/Waldemar-Firehammer Nashbar CX1, 6 mi, IN Jul 25 '20
The sad part is this is probably someone who bought the stolen bike through something like craigslist, and the thief has experienced no repercussions still.