Disguise your bike ?

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
Isn't that likely to end up as a "burglar's shopping list" like immobilise did? Don't upload your bikes before they're nicked IMO.
 

Jody

Stubborn git
Where does that site get its data from because I have put a few postcodes from the town next to me and it says no bikes have been stolen. But I know there are a few high end bikes that have been nicked in the last 6 months.
 

I like Skol

A Minging Manc...
Probably the http://police.uk crime map service. Were the high end bikes you know reported to the police?
This reminded me of some 'advice' I was given some decades ago when new to driving. Someone told me that should my car ever be stolen from outside the house don't report it as the site of the theft but choose somewhere else suitable/plausible that is nearby but preferably in a different postcode.
The reasoning for this is that the theft incident will be tagged onto the address and it will then have a blackmark against it which will be considered by all insurers when quoting for an insurance premium. Also by choosing a different postcode you are not impacting the insurance rates for yourself and the immediate area.
The fact that this was lies didn't apparently matter as they were unlikely to recover the vehicle and if they did they were even less likely to apprehend the culprits and even in the unlikely event that they were caught the chance was that the thieving scumbags insistence he didn't take the car from where you said it was stolen would be considered to be a weak attempt to avoid the rap.
I wonder if this is happening with expensive bikes too? You need to claim for the theft of your £5k bike but you also want to be able to insure the replacement next year. To ensure this isn't prohibitively expensive you could claim the bike was stolen while suitably locked up outside the nearby newsagent where you had stopped to buy a lottery ticket. Your renewal quote isn't loaded and you are only the cost of a broken window or door lock out of pocket.

This may be why the stats don't seem to reflect reality?
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
I wonder if this is happening with expensive bikes too? You need to claim for the theft of your £5k bike but you also want to be able to insure the replacement next year. To ensure this isn't prohibitively expensive you could claim the bike was stolen while suitably locked up outside the nearby newsagent where you had stopped to buy a lottery ticket. Your renewal quote isn't loaded and you are only the cost of a broken window or door lock out of pocket.

This may be why the stats don't seem to reflect reality?
Possible, but I think most insurance policies I've seen for expensive bikes (not my bikes - purely academic reading when online discussions mentioned them!) give you a much lower excess for thefts from home because they specify higher security at home (ground anchors and stuff). Also, they usually want a police incident number so they'd be reported and I'd expect the false nearby location to be within a mile of home, so still show up for you in the total on the postcode search.

Intuitively, the only theft hotspots I know that surprised me was one in a shopping centre that I thought had good CCTV but actually doesn't (and the cycle parking is slowly being removed, controversially, instead of improving CCTV) and a cycle park that has those streetpods which the police recommended as being secure but I dislike because only one of my bikes fits in only half of their spaces.
 

vickster

Legendary Member
The owner of this S-Works Venge seems to have done a good job,

View attachment 157464
Looks much better than a Venge ;) :whistle:
 

vickster

Legendary Member
This reminded me of some 'advice' I was given some decades ago when new to driving. Someone told me that should my car ever be stolen from outside the house don't report it as the site of the theft but choose somewhere else suitable/plausible that is nearby but preferably in a different postcode.
The reasoning for this is that the theft incident will be tagged onto the address and it will then have a blackmark against it which will be considered by all insurers when quoting for an insurance premium. Also by choosing a different postcode you are not impacting the insurance rates for yourself and the immediate area.
The fact that this was lies didn't apparently matter as they were unlikely to recover the vehicle and if they did they were even less likely to apprehend the culprits and even in the unlikely event that they were caught the chance was that the thieving scumbags insistence he didn't take the car from where you said it was stolen would be considered to be a weak attempt to avoid the rap.
I wonder if this is happening with expensive bikes too? You need to claim for the theft of your £5k bike but you also want to be able to insure the replacement next year. To ensure this isn't prohibitively expensive you could claim the bike was stolen while suitably locked up outside the nearby newsagent where you had stopped to buy a lottery ticket. Your renewal quote isn't loaded and you are only the cost of a broken window or door lock out of pocket.

This may be why the stats don't seem to reflect reality?

This sounds pretty fraudulent to me. My car was stolen from my drive at night a few years ago :sad: If I had reported the theft at a different postcode, I would potentially not have been insured, as my car is insured to be on my drive at night. Lying to an insurance company in such as situation does sound like a pretty stupid thing to do if you expect the claim to be settled and to be able to get insurance later (and potentially not be prosecuted for fraud)

Interestingly, and it may be a coincidence, the insurance company (same as for the car) at my home insurance renewal stipulated that I had to have a burglar alarm fitted (I hadn't been burgled for the keys, the scumbags somehow lifted the car). I just moved my home insurance elsewhere, no need to disclose motor claims (insurers I believe can access all the info anyhow through their databases)
 

I like Skol

A Minging Manc...
This sounds pretty fraudulent to me. My car was stolen from my drive at night a few years ago :sad: If I had reported the theft at a different postcode, I would potentially not have been insured, as my car is insured to be on my drive at night. Lying to an insurance company in such as situation does sound like a pretty stupid thing to do if you expect the claim to be settled and to be able to get insurance later (and potentially not be prosecuted for fraud)

Interestingly, and it may be a coincidence, the insurance company (same as for the car) at my home insurance renewal stipulated that I had to have a burglar alarm fitted (I hadn't been burgled for the keys, the scumbags somehow lifted the car). I just moved my home insurance elsewhere, no need to disclose motor claims (insurers I believe can access all the info anyhow through their databases)
I'm not saying I have done this, would do this or condone it in any way, but I'm sure it does happen.
As for being prosecuted for insurance fraud, don't make me laugh! Motor vehicle insurance companies practically encourage you to lie. Their standard T&Cs usually include something to the effect of 'under no circumstances admit fault or accept liability for any accident or claim arising from any incident covered by this insurance policy'. There is very little consequence for lying about an insurance claim. When my wife was heavily pregnant with our first child a driver pulled out of a parking spot as my wife drove along the road and collided with the side of my wife's car. They apologised and accepted full blame at the scene, but when the paperwork was submitted they had moved the location of the accident a few hundred yards up the road to a junction where they could make the damage match a scenario where my wife had pulled out of a side street in front of them. It looked as though they were going to get away with it too as it was their word against ours, but luckily we managed to track down a witness (a contractor who had been working in the nearby bus station at the time and had come across to check my wife was ok after the accident). Even with the proof that they were making fraudulent claims the culprit was still not penalised in any way and had their own damage repaired by their own insurance, therefore losing any NCD just the same as if they had accepted liability in the first place. The insurance company has no interest in taking action because if the client lies and it works, they pay out in less instances.
I know property insurance is not quite the same but insurance fraud is rife and we are all paying inflated premiums as a result.
 
Not admiting liability is not the same as lying
Yes. In my only at-fault collision I said "I am not admitting liability, but the facts are that your car was stopped a red light and I drove my car into the back of it." It was hard not to add "sorry" at the end.

Oh, and by the way, good karma is sometimes returned. Though they were perfectly entitled to make a claim on me, but their car already had a number of dents and I never heard from them.
 
Top Bottom