Last October, I was looking through a local cycling page for local people and became aware of a guy who lives near me and seemed to be having a run of bad luck. He was stony broke but had just got a new job and needed to commute at night with no lights – insane!

I know what it’s like to be so skint that you can’t even afford a Halfords light set, so I offered to lend him my brand new Solar Storm and a rear light on the proviso that I got it back before Christmas. Next thing we heard, he’d been knocked off his bike and was going to get the bus every day instead.

So I asked him if I could have my lights back, he said yes, come and pick them up from my work. So I drove over (not too far) and waited. No show. He’d forgotten apparently. The next time, he’d left the battery at home. The next time…. etc, etc ad-nauseum. There followed about another eight attempts from me, asking politely for my light before I just wrote it off.

But I was a bit peeved – sure it’s only a £16 light but the ungrateful sod never once offered to come and drop it off – it was always, “Meet me here / there / wherever and I’ll give you it back”. And always at ridiculous times or places.

Fast forward and he gets in touch with me to tell me the light wasn’t working and he was coming over to give me it back. Told him to stuff it and if he wanted to he could buy me a new one. He won’t.

He’s still sponging stuff off other people in the group which frankly pisses me off – should I mention it casually on the FB group or just have a cup of tea?

Shine a light on it.

id give others a heads up. thats not on.

SolarStorm in a teacup.

(not really, deploy the pitchforks)

Have just mentioned it 😀 It really isn’t the money (although I’m flat broke too) – it’s just the total rudeness and sense of entitlement.

If you’d know then what you know now, would you have lent him the light? Guess no, so you’ve done the right thing before someone else gets stung.

That would piss me right off, not the money but just the barefaced cheek of waisting your time and then trying to give it back when it is broken!

Didn’t name any names but members will likely know who I’m referring to… Feels better to have got it off my chest!! Irony is, my older Magicshine has just packed up 😀 Good job the nights are getting lighter!

Hang on, is this just an elaborate ruse to get someone to “lend” you their light?

😀

he sounds peachy…

has he listed them on the classifieds for £20 yet?

That would frustrate me – but at the end of the day, it was £16 a year ago.

Last weekend I loaned my 4-bike Thule tow bar rack to a fellow forumite, whom I had never met before. 😯
I have also had another forumite loan me a bike frame at the moment (a SC Superlight…) for one of my sons to use for a year.

Some people are chumps. Some are lovely. As is life.

chakaping – you offering? CTM – honestly, nothing would surprise me.

The admin of the group named him within about three minutes of my genuinely subtle post 😀

In the eternal battle between “be a dick” or “don’t be a dick”, it sounds like he is continually losing.

No good deed goes unpunished 🙁

You did something genuinely nice for somebody only to be rewarded with rudeness. You did the right thing by informing the group. If I had a light I’d give you it

Do you need a head unit or battery?

Some people are Strange.

I’ve got a solar storm head unit you can have, at least I ‘think’ I still have.

Email me if you want it.

James

Actually, you’ve reminded me, I need to post some shifters back to someone on here. Doh!

Cheers all for thoughts and helping me to decide to warn the group and get on with life 🙂 chakaping – really good of you but I have enough torches to light up most of the north east, so I’ll struggle on 😉

Someone on this forum is currently benefiting (or not) from a loan of a whole bike, courtesy of Weeksy, Metalheart and myself. I’ve not had any feedback on how it fits or how much it has been used but being a new daddy can be a bit distracting. I’m assuming we’ll get our bits back in due course. 🙂

Ach, I won’t let it put me off lending / giving people stuff but research is obviously the key here. No one likes being taken for a mug.

Honestly I reckon it’s best to just give away stuff rather than lending. That way you get the warm feeling even if they are taking you for a ride ( cos you don’t find out). Of course that does depend on you being able to afford it.

I’ve been mugged off many times with loaned out stuff. I let someone borrow my Mitsubishi ex council industrial strimmer years ago, can’t remember who I loaned it to but I never got it back. I bought another the same but It got nicked. 🙄

I loaned a 2 week old bike to a guy I worked with (in a bike shop), for half a day, it came back with chipped paint and several dents in the top tube.
I loaned a mate a pair of decent wheels, couple of days later, walking through town, there’s his bike (with my wheels on it) sitting unlocked outside the council offices.
Obviously, i realise that most people aren’t like this, but to make sure, I don’t loan stuff any more.
I may give it away, or i can dispense free advice about what is needed, but I don’t loan stuff.
Small minority of piss takers ruin it for others every time.

Some folk manage to hide the fact they are dicks….. once you find that out you then have a green light to treat them as dicks.

I loaned my rather expensive and new lightweight car jack to a “sort of” neighbour as he wanted to fit new alloy wheels to his car, i warned him beforehand to make sure the jack was supported on level ground so that the jack would not sink as it may twist the chassis.

Needless to say i eventually had to go round to his house to get my jack back after many days of him promising to return it but it was very obviously twisted the moment i saw it – “You arsehole…it’s twisted to ****, that’s a new jack you owe me” he told me to ****-off so i did what anyone would do as he is 10″ taller than me and prob weighs twice my weight. That night i removed his new 19″ OZ racing Superturismo alloy wheels with brand new Pirelli Pzero tyres and left his Golf up on cut logs, stuck a note on his windscreen saying he owed me £155 or i’d sell his wheels/tyres on eBay with a buy it now of £200.

Got my money for the jack, he got his wheels back and he is still a dick but thankfully a dick without a car as he got caught last year 4 times over the legal limit.

Somafunk. Isn’t karma wonderful!!

Somafunk that’s a brilliant, fabulous story

It would have been even better if I could say I stuck the head on him and split his nose across his pugnacious face then dragged his pitiful arse by the heels to the cashline but as I’m a bit of a runt at 5ft 5″/70kg with an ability to walk no more than than 10 yards without tripping over my own feet due to a considerable spinal injury I thought such a lie would find me out in the end as there’s plenty folk on this forum who know me 😀

Brain over brawn won that time, 15 years ago I would’ve took a bat to his car then moved onto him but I have no real desire to ever see the inside of a cell again

That night i removed his new 19″ OZ racing Superturismo alloy wheels with brand new Pirelli Pzero tyres

You would have thought he would have the sense to fit some locking wheel nuts 🙂

I lent a guy I was at uni with a decent quality pressure jetter, arshole used it as a pump to empty out a pit in his garage. He returned a knackered pressure jetter with the words ‘sorry it sounds a bit rough’.

“Neither a lender nor a borrower be”

I lent our family Vango tent to a school pal and he left it in his boot with a can of petrol, which leaked and melted the underseal, with which he had painted the inside of the boot, leaving a nice inkblot pattern right across the flysheet. No attempt to buy a new flysheet. Later the same bloke was offended when I refused his request to borrow my camera for a holiday.

Still no joy. Would it be politic to turn up at the guy’s door, where he lives with his partner and child, and demand my lights back? He only lives a few miles away and whilst he’s bigger than me, “I do this for a living” 😉

[video]https://youtu.be/ibp7dauhm_c[/video]

but I have no real desire to ever see the inside of a cell again

I knew I’d seen you before somewhere! 😉

Anyway, can anyone lend me a towball mounted rack that tilts to carry one bike please (seriously) for the 1st week in May?
Wer’e going in the wife’s car & she’s not keen on my (immmaculate) bike going in the back with the dog!

I lent my tandem out to somebody who made contact through this forum a number of years ago. I hope he’s still enjoying it although he seems to have become confused with “loan” and ‘yours to keep”.
I suppose it’s technically stolen but I have to take some responsibility for the loss, I suppose. Random act of kindness and trust in a stranger and all that.
Still, If I had a one bike leaning rack for a car tow ball, I’d have no hesitation in letting Mr EssexGrunt. take it.

I have an issue where i live in a small village and after fixing a few elderly neighbours bikes in return for a couple of beers, everyone seems to think i am running a bike shop out of my garage and that with just tools i can somehow repair the rusted/broken/bent and worn bikes with just a spanner and some fairy dust.

I didn’t mind doing it for my actual neighbours as they have been really good to my daughter, but when people “just happen to have their bike out when i’m in the garage trying to work on my own bikes for once” it gets a bit much.

When you turn round to them and say “i can order the parts you need to replace that worn part, or i can order the new brake blocks and chain you need” and tell them how much it will be, some seem genuinely taken a back that their bike isn’t just fixed with magic!!

esselgruntfuttock

I have a Thule towball rack (2bike) you can borrow if you can collect from Leeds or Wakefield ?

Esselgruntfuttock – have a 3 bike Thule that tilts can borrow. Live Newcastle but work Durham if any use?

Waheyy, thank you Neal & Niall!

I’m in Durham more than Leeds or Wakey Neal but that’s good of you, thanks.

Where do you work In Durham Niall?

I’m based at the old lanchester road hospital site, here 4 days/ week.

I lent out a full set of home made bearing presses (machined them up on the lathe at work) to a stranger on a FB forum.

I packaged them up in separate bags with photo instructions showing which bit went where, plus a sample bearing just to make sure there was no confusion.

Took a couple of reminders to get them back and when they did they were all mixed up with some parts missing or damaged, plus he kept two of the four sample bearings!!

Needless to say, they won’t be lent again to anyone I don’t know!