I’m new to this site. I just registered my bike here. And I notice that there are stickers that can be put on bikes. I’m wondering if there is an advantage to having one on my bike. Potentially, the benefit is twofold:
- if someone sees my bike discarded somewhere, and they know about this site, they know it’s worth getting the s/n off it, to check if it’s been stolen.
- if someone see’s my bike discarded somewhere, and they don’t know about this site, they might check the website out, leading to me possibly getting the bike back.
A potential negative is that if a crook, who’d stolen my bike, sees the sticker, and checks out the website, they might remove or alter the s/n, to avoid detection that it’s a stolen bike.
What do others here think?
my thoughts are anything to help retrieve your bike is a positive. your 2 points are valid.
however, i think as a bike owner the single most important thing to keep your bike from getting stolen is to keep out of the thieves’ hands. cuz once your bike is stolen, the chances of seeing your bike again are between slim and none. your best hope is the thief was joyriding to transport himself from A to B and discarded. if professional thief or homeless guy looking for cash at the local transient chop shop, your bike is gone. and as for the potential negative, they’re not really threatened by serial or stickers.
my point is these are not deterrents to thieves. it may assist you in the slimmest chance to retrieve your bike but doesn’t deter anyone.
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I think it’s great you registered your bike. Of course you want to put a sticker on it! At this point, a sticker won’t work as a deterrent, but like you said, it might key someone into searching for the serial on the internet if they see the sticker, and hadn’t thought to search already. It certainly won’t hurt.
I do not think the presence of a sticker would compel a thief to file off the serial. I imagine that serial will get, or not get, filed off regardless of the sticker.
So what’s the point? Well, I’d like bikindex to be so popular inh town, that thieves go steal bikes from some other town, because it’s common knowledge that everyone in Tacoma puts their serial numbers into bikindex, which makes them slightly more difficult to steal!