Have you had a pub/station bike stolen?

[The Family Cyclist]

I've got to do a presentation on cycle theft as part of my degree course, I've found figures on what percentage of bike thefts are reported but wonder if some people have a cheap pub or station bike which is almost seen as disposable and don't report if stolen

If you have any experience please vote

[sam]

Your poll reminds me that I didn't bother reporting my decent enough bike when it was stolen. Perhaps I should've.

[Wowbagger]

I selected "good bike". I thought it was at the time. These days it would be regarded as "quaint". It cost me £66 new. Before Margaret Thatcher was PM. I got over £100 back on the insurance.

[Salvatore]

My good bike was stolen during my first week at university in 1975, and reported. I'd done my first long tour on it during the summer and had subsequently upgraded all sorts of stuff on it.

In my final year I bought a bike from a junk shop for £3. It had a hub gear which didn't work, so I was stuck in top gear, and it had flat handlebars but brake levers intended for drops. Ideal for getting around. Definitely disposable. splashed out on a lock for £3.50. One evening I came out of the library to find the bike missing but the lock lying on the ground. Not reported.

[OT: Not stolen was a bike which I got through my uncle, who worked for Commercial Union. Someone's bike had been run over, crushing the wheels, and had made an urgent claim for a replacement bicycle, which the CU had paid. But it meant they now had a frame and all the bits, so it was sold (to me) as "salvage" for £4.32 (£4 +8% VAT). I bought some cheap wheels, and I probably considered it disposable, but rode an end-to-end on it and subsequently used it as a pub bike and eventually sold it for £35.]

[De Sisti]

I had a Huffy™ mountain bike stolen from outside of the Rugby Club at RAF Gatow in 1991.
The bike was taken by a Welsh Guards army unit who played on the base that afternoon.
I bought it from the PX in the American sector (so it wasn't expensive).

[Afasoas]

I managed to get 4 bikes stolen in the space of one year - ~2008ish.

One was a good bike (MTB). I'd left it for a few moments in the custody of another human. They were mugged for the bike.

One was a goodish bike (Trek Soho Single Speed). I'd left it unlocked in the garden overnight (lapse in concentration). It was chipped and consequently ~2 years later I was re-united with it. It was in such a sorry state, it was barely worth getting back.

One was a bike shaped object. Stolen from an enclosed/locked back garden, where it had been left overnight. No where more secure to store it and I wasn't afforded the luxury of taking it indoors.

I think the fourth was an old road bike, which I think disappeared from a communcal cycle/bin store in an apartment complex. Memory is a bit vague.

[MattH]

So for I've only lost one bike. Which I was a bit miffed about.
I used to work very regularly in Sweden, three weeks out of four at one point, so left a Specialized single speed (not a langster, it was whatever the cyclocross one was at the time, gravel not being a thing) there. It had been upgraded with a decent fixed hub on an openpro back wheel and a B17. Left in a secure compound at work chained to the bike rack next to the building (the whole building was inside the compound). Used it for well over a year there. But then I didn't go out for a couple of months, and then was going to leave the company. So on my last trip there, I went over to that building to collect it. The entire compound, building and my bike were gone, just a large rectangle of dirt left.
My team who worked in that building hadn't mentioned that they were being relocated, and hadn't thought about the bike. My bike bag was still in the left luggage room in our main building, so I flew back with an empty bag.