What I don’t understand is why frame numbers of new bikes are not added to the Immobilise website (or some other centralised database) at the point of sale – i.e. by the shops that sell them.
Surely that would solve the problem of police not being able to trace stolen bikes once and for all?
Yes and no.
Years ago when I worked in a shop we (initially) had a triplicate paper receipt for bike sales, it did later all become EPOS-based but it wasn’t compulsory to record frame numbers until an incident when we had a customer phone up saying that the bike he’d bought 3 weeks ago had been nicked, could we tell him the frame number. No, we didn’t keep any records like that. He read off some code from his receipt which was just the EPOS code and asked if that was any use. No.
He then became really irate asking why we didn’t have records, we told him it was his responsibility, he said he’d never been told etc etc, it just went back and forth.
So after that it became company policy to record the frame number at point of sale and inform the customer about keeping a record of it.
It’s not like selling a car though where there is a central database of everything. Bike (or frame) sales are so common that such a record is largely irrelevent, bits get changed all the time. You might trace a frame back to it’s original owner but who is there keeping a record of all of that? It boils down to a national database of bicycles similar to car registration, not impossible by any means but time consuming and expensive to enforce.
I ensure that I have recent photos and lists of my bike specs, inc frame numbers, if the worst happens I can give that to the police or local bike shops etc.