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The Great Bike Robbery

Ric McLaughlin Wednesday, Oct 1, 2008 12.00pm

At MBUK Towers we get phone calls and emails all the time from people telling us that their pride and joy has been stolen. Upsettingly, there's very little we can do about it. It's a harsh realisation that something worth so much financial and sentimental value is no longer in your posession.

In the time it's taken to upload this article, somewhere in Britain, someone has had their bike stolen. Some 1,200 bikes a day get pilfered and a staggering 90% of those are stolen from a public place and are locked up.

Contrary to popular myth, the police do recover a large amount of these bikes. However, the problem lies in getting them back to their rightful owners. That's were the ImmobiTag comes in...

Your bike's frame number, description, photos and receipts can all be registered online with immobilise.com, the world's leading posession ownership database. This database is now a standard in the auto-trade and is supported by all UK Police Forces. If your bike is stolen, you simply change it's online status and immediately the Police and second-hand trade are notified.

Fitting couldn't be easier, the small plastic bung is inserted into your seat-tube then once you put the post back in, is pushed to the bottom and is virtually un-removable.

Once found, the small radio frequency device in the bung gives out a unique signal which then links the Police straight to your bikes information and your contact details.

Bish, bash, bosh - you get your trusty stead back and some tea-leaf gets some good hard time at her majesty's leisure!

Bikeradar.com users can even get themselves an ImmobiTag at the reduced price of £11.99 (RRP £13.99) from the ImmobiTag website. Just lclick the previous link and enter 'bikeradar' as the voucher code. 

User Comments

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  • I am involved with the police liaison around the UK where there are numerous tagging schemes using the Immobitag. I agree with all of what the article states, the police do recover in my estimation over 50% of stolen bikes but only identify around 5-7% because of poor descriptions. Fitting the tag will improve the ID rate because the details are registered on nthe immobilise database which is searchable nationally by the police. At last bikes stolen in one police force and recovered in another can now be identified. One more figure has come out of the police cycle crime reduction initiatives. Bikes that are tagged are 10 times less likely to be stolen.

    Regards

    John Macintyre

  • 1

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