I wish eBay would insist on Frame numbers on listing a bike, sometimes I ask for the frame number and its ignored or listing removed,

this one is described as Immaculate,

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/specialized-sirrus-Hybrid-mountain-Bike-For-Sale/332862175927

and this one with 2nd class postage? and zero feedback?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/cannondale-racing-bike/401626839937

My stolen bike was listed on ebay recently using my pictures. Ebay would only accept a report of stolen goods from law enforcement and they are still investigating if they can be bothered to investigate!

Seems to me that Ebay, Gumtree, Facebook etc are happy to allow stolen goods to be sold via their platform as long as the fees are paid where as the Police don’t have the capacity to do anything about stolen goods.

Seems crime does pay.

To be fair I wouldn’t pay more than that for either bike.

I wasn’t looking to buy, but they look stolen and it pisses me off how bikes just go missing and the thieving ****’s get away with it.

I wonder what the accuracy rate of identifying stolen items on ebay would be (not just bikes) when passed in front of a handful of subject experts. I reckon I could get a pretty accurate hit rate with 30 seconds of what I could see on a listing (pics, words, seller history) and I don’t have the account analysis insight that ebay/gumtree etc have on the setup and use of the account. Of course I’d struggle with power tools, electronics and other commonly stolen items but it wouldn’t be difficult for an organisation the size and scale of ebay to turn the problem over to machine learning and then have humans doing some of the finer-detail validation and questioning.

Agree 100% it’s all just business as far as the marketplaces care but that just isn’t good enough.