If you have ever ridden a bike, worked in the bike industry, and/or followed along with Bike Index, you may have noticed two important trends:
- Bike Index is growing! We have lots of new users and organizations entering our system, and at an ever increasing rate.
- Bike season is a real thing that starts around March and runs until about October. Anyone who rides or works on anything involved with bikes is swamped during those months.
Point 1 is great, obviously. It means more people are registering their bikes, and increasing their potential for recovery. Point 2 is also great because it means bicycles as a means of recreation, exercise, and fun continue to remain popular.
But ‘bike season’ means that we at Bike Index are starting to be inundated with requests for help and support. We have, and will continue to, take very deliberate care and work tons of hours to respond to each of these requests. We want to make sure every Bike Index user has a simple and easy experience, and is able to get in touch with a Bike Index representative if they have any issues. And if a bike is stolen, we are going to do our best to work with you to get it back.
But simply put, turnaround time is going to increase very soon.
Why are we telling you this? Well, we want you to know what to expect from us, but also for our busy months, we will prioritize service requests from people who have donated to Bike Index.
Bike Index is always going to remain free. We built the system to be free because a free system with our capabilities didn’t exist, and you probably spent money to buy your bike. There’s absolutely no reason you should have to also pay to keep it safe. Bike Index not being free would violate the basic tenets of Bike Index.
And we’re still going to get back to everyone. It might just not be as quick as it would be in the winter months when we have less volume to respond to. We’re only three people.
Ultimately, we hope this will also incentivize people to donate. If you’re a donor and you ever need to contact us, we’ll see your messages right away. Because we’re a nonprofit, much of the Bike Index effort is funded out-of-pocket. People who donate go a long way in our book, and we want to show thanks to the folks who have donated their time and money to making sure we can register and recover more bikes.
And as per usual, we want to hear from you! Send us your questions or support requests.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://bikeindex.org/news/get-your-donations-in-this-summer-to-help-bike-index-master-bike-seaso?locale=en