prairiepedaler

I responded a few hours after it was listed. No reply

Milton Keynes

Hmm.... A $1500 bike listed for $70. Stolen, or a scam?

rmfnla

Hot, indeed...

Milton Keynes

Before handing over cash for that bike, I'd definitely run the serial number through NCIC...

prairiepedaler

Hi, I wouldn't buy that bike. I have a personal vendetta against bike thieves (even though I've not yet had one stolen) and wanted to find out where the guy lives. Bike theft is a big problem here. There is one, repeat ONE, cop on bike recovery detail yet there are over a 100 cops/day lurking around on revenue generation duty. They've no incentive to reunite the missing bike with it's owner as they sell them off every year at local auction and keep the proceeds. So, I'm trying to make it a little more difficult for these thieves on my own.

Milton Keynes

I don't know that they deliberately don't want to reunite recovered bikes with their owners, but so many bikes are recovered and so few, if stolen, are reported or if reported stolen but the owner doesn't know the serial number. I worked as a dispatcher for 15 years, and we recovered hundreds of bikes a year. Each bike would be checked by running the serial number through NCIC, and very few of them would come back with a hit. So into storage the bike would go waiting for an owner to claim it, and if not it would be sold at auction. But very few bikes would be claimed, either. Of course most of them would be Walmart BSO's, but people just didn't seem to care about them.

So, basically write down the serial number of your bike, and should it be stolen give that information to the police so it can be entered into the national computer system.

prairiepedaler

Hi, the recovery and return system is terrible at best. A cop gets paid at the end of the day no matter the outcome, thus dis-incentivizing performance. The lust for funds isn't quite as great or as lucrative as the legalized racketeering scheme known as "asset forefeiture" or ticket quotas, but they take what they can get and bike sale revenue is one such source.

Thieves can be silver plattered to the cops and they do nothing. This in-action has even been written about in the local papers. A month ago I was in the main civic run community bike shop which also houses all the unclaimed wayward bikes that will be auctioned off for the cop pension fund. There are several 1000 in there, many really nice ones too.

Those who have skin in the game are most motivated and that's why I do what I do. I get around by bike 365/yr. If I lost my ride and knowing how the system works, I'd kiss it goodbye. For me such a loss would be similar to an early plains settler losing his horse to theft (i.e. catastrophic). I see cries begging for return of stolen bikes in the local classifieds and it is heartbreaking. Some of my recent threads have been about acquiring and building up back-up bikes in the case of a loss.

decentdrummer91

Argh...hate when a bike gets stolen and sold for cheap cash

hcgaloi

Why are we so quick at assuming the bike is stolen? Because the listed price is cheap?

I once saw a nice Cannondale Synapse (sp?) with many upgraded components at a garage sale for $20. It belonged to the seller's late husband. Either she didn't know its value or didn't care. She just wanted to get rid of it quickly.

Last week I went to pick up a wheel truing stand from a Craigslist seller. While there, I told him I have recently started cycling for fitness. He told me he had gotten out of the sport for a couple of years and asked if I wanted all of his tools. He picked up a portable toolbox and threw all kind of tools into it. Some were so odd looking that I had no idea what they were for. The only thing I recognized were lots of Park Tools stamped on them. My guesstimate was several hundred dollars worth, but he asked for $40. Now I ended up with a box full of tools that I don't even know what to do with.

So, when things are cheap, the owners may simply have a need to get rid of them quickly without hassles. "One man trash is another man treasure."

SkyDog75

I'm sure there are people here who could help you figure out what to do with them. Start a thread, post pics, and we'll identify them. If you don't need certain tools, some of us could probably use 'em.

...just a thought. ;-)

Milton Keynes

That, and the fact that the seller lists the retail price of $1500. So they know what it's worth but they're selling it for less than $100. So that means it's likely stolen or the ad is a scam of some sort.

decentdrummer91

Exactly

Stucky

If I've learned one thing from Canukistanian interweb friends, it's that your Kijiji can be far more interesting and entertaining than our Craigslist! Down here on CL, it's always the same old thing; the "2008 Honda Accordion for $2236" with "free shipping" and "7 day inspection period with free return"..."pay with iTunes gift cards" LOL BORING!

Milton Keynes

Yeah, there's a common scam where they list a vehicle with a really cheap price, then they claim that they're in the military and deployed overseas, the vehicle is locked up on a military base with no way for a potential buyer to inspect it before buying. But, should you decide to buy it, the money will go into an escrow account and if you decide you don't want the vehicle after 7 days or so, then your money will be returned to you. Of course the escrow account doesn't exist and your money goes directly to the scammer who you never hear from again.

I don't know if they'd work this same scam for $70 but it wouldn't surprise me.

Stucky

Exactly. That one is so old, you can spot the ads when just skimming, without even having to click on them. You'd think that they'd at least move on to something new, but I guess people must still be falling for that classic, because it never goes away.

I can't believe that people fall for that one! I mean, there are just so many non-sequiteurs: Why would someone need to advertise their vehicle 2000 miles away if they were selling it for less than wholesale? Why would someone, in addition to practically giving their vehicle away, be willing to pay a few grand to ship it in an enclosed container? Who in their right mind would ship their car to a stranger, and let them have it for x number of days and then pay to ship it back if the person didn't want it?! (All for a $2K car, no less!). Since when do legit services instruct buyers to pay via MoneyGram, GreenDot cards or iTunes gift cards? LOL! (They in-fact warn people NOT to pay via those insecure methods!).

Surely, if people are falling for such absurdly blatant scams, imagine if the scammers were running better, more sophisticated ones!

Just for grits and shins, I once told my 91 year-old mother: "There's a mint '06 F150 4x4 with less than 100K miles on Craigslist..." -and before i could even finish saying it, she was like "Oh, that's gotta be a scam or something!".

Milton Keynes

If people only understood that sending money via Western Union is just like mailing money to someone. Once it's out of your hands, it's gone forever. So if you don't know 100% for sure who you're sending money to, then don't.

Western Union and other cash wiring services could help put an end to these scams if they wanted to, but I'm betting a large amount of their revenue comes from people sending money to scammers.

Stucky

Ya know what though? Those services DO warn people, both in print and in person, to only send money to people whom they know. Many of the Western Union clerks when seeing someone requesting an amount of $2K or more will even ask if they've responded to an ad on CL, and tell them it's a scam....and yet many of the suckers still go for it, because their own greed gets the better of them.

Sure, they could probably stop it, but like so many other things these days, how much inconvenience and giving up of privacy would the innocent have to give up (which in-turn opens them up to potential fraudulent activity) in order to achieve that?

Ya can't protect people from themselves, and quite frankly, I'm tired of everything being geared toward the lowest common denominator, and forcing us all to be treated like crooks or to have no privacy, just to protect a few idiots, who, if they don't lose their money to that particular scam, will just fall for something else, anyway, because they won't listen to the warnings. At some point, adults need to take responsibility for their own choices, and maybe learn a lesson or two the hard way, instead of always having a system that is hobbled by always trying to protect them. (I know, I know.... easy for me to say, since I'm rich, or, rather will be in a few days, when that check from the Nigerian prince arrives! )

Milton Keynes

Yeah, if not a Nigerian scam, they'd likely be signing up for some multilevel marketing get-rich-quick scheme.