Found an abandoned bike in the alley by my house last week. Checked with neighbours it isn't theirs.
Figured I'd lock the bike in my shed and then get in touch with the police. However my local force doesn't want to know about it either on the phone or online - can't even seem to leave details of the bike with them. Their website directs me to city council.
Council website also doesn't have a place to report it stolen. Googled it and it seemed like a lot of people had used FixMyStreet to report similar incidents. Did this and the response was to post on my local Facebook groups.
So I re-activated my dormant FB account and have put posts up on groups but no takers.
Also been checking BikeRegister and Stolen Bikes but it hasn't been registered on those.
Any other places I can advertise it? Going to have to send it to a bike charity if I can't find the owner.
This is a Giant bike in Bristol on the off chance someone on here has lost it.
I found a Trek, contacted the importer with the frame number, they said it was sold by Beyond Bikes, I called them, they said they sold it a chap near me. Can't remember if they gave me his number or I gave them mine to pass on, but he lives round the corner, I pumped the tyres up and rode it round to him. This was budget, cupld of years old but not ridden much. You might not get as useful response!
I know someone that did all the checks with the police etc, never found the owner and ended up with a nice Carbon Spesh Roubaix after he found it dumped in a hedge.
Check local bike shops? As above you may find one who sold it in the first place, however the owner may have reported a stolen bike to local shops to see if anyone tried to sell it to them...
Thieves routinely dump a bike for a couple of days in case it's got a tracker on it. Same with cars.
Since the police response to most bike theft is non-existent, most people just claim on insurance or put it down to "one of those things" and the theft victim won't even bother looking for the bike or registering it as stolen on an external site.