With most new bike sold being stolen within 24 months, it’s really important to take down a few essential details of your bike that will drastically improve the odds of your bike being returned should the worst happen.
The minimum of details you should take are
- Make and Model of Bike
- Frame Number (usually found near your pedals, often on the bottom of the frame).
- Any scratches, marks or parts that makes your bike unique
- If possible take a photo as well
There are several services (listed below), which assist you with taking all the relevant details. Alternatively if you wish to do it yourself, you can just write down the details or simply email the details to yourself for safe keeping.
Immobilise
Immobilise is a property register, widely adopted by police forces in the UK. Whilst it’s business practices are morally questionable, it’s wide adoption means that it’s well worth using to register your bike.
(seems inactive now)
BikeShepherd
Bike Shepherd< is a easy to use bicycle specific register, whilst it hasn't been adopted by any police forces. It was at the time of writing the only bicycle register that also publicizes your bike should it go missing (excluding ourselves).
BikeRegister
For various reasons I can’t go into, I don’t recommend Bike Register to anyone!