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Orbea Orca Di2 missing, anyone?

by gandberg
Thu, Jan 20, 2011 22:01
4

Very very, extremely bloody dubious:

http://www.gumtree.com/london/88/71566588.html

Is there a reward for finding it?!

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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4 comments

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Jon Burrage | 13 years ago
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On this theme I very nearly bought a full carbon giant with dura ace about a year ago. It was collection only in Liverpool and without prejudice (there are some really nice parts of liverpool) I drove there from Bristol and had cash with me. I found the street and house, drove past a couple of times. Parked then walked past once.

All windows had wire mesh over them, grafiti scrawled on walls, a bus shelter has been burnt down opposite and the front garden/hole was full of empty cans of super strength beer.

I carried on walking, £900 in my pocket. Got back to the car and left.

On my way home I got 4 abusive phone calls "where the f*** are you?" etc etc etc "Im gonna f****** find you and kill you". In hindsight maybe it was too good a deal but it must work on some people (e.g/ they turn up and get robbed) for them to do it at all.

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gandberg | 13 years ago
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I have also noticed some ridiculously underpriced bikes on gumtree in B'ham, clearly being sold by people who know nothing about spelling and grammar, let alone bikes. Do these people hope some one will turn up to look at the possibly none existent bike with £2k cash on them, then rob them?

I didnt expect this advert to be genuine, but thought I'd post it incase some poor bugger had had their bike nicked, and the thieves we thick enough to post such a bike for sale on a national website. Having been a victim of bike theft myself a few years ago I know how infuriating it is to have something uninsured taken. Mine was a motox bike, which like bicycles dont belong to any national registers (such as road registered motorcycles) which makes finding a bike much much harder to find. Why don't we have a registration system for high end push bikes? Too much paperwork? I wouldnt mind filling a form in if it helped reduce bike theft. With my motox bike, I actually saw it for sale in a local free ads paper, 3 years after it got nicked. It was a tm125 (a rare beast on these shores) and after remembering where the chassis numbers were, I left the unfortunate seller (not the thief) and called the police who recovered the machine and eventually I got it back. It was almost wrecked, but at least I got it back.

Anyway, cant something be done to help us valuable cycle owners?

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Tony Farrelly | 13 years ago
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Just in case you're tempted I got in touch with Orbea's UK representative about this ad and here's what he had to say:

"This would have to be a bike that has been built up here in the UK as the permutation of 2009 frame and Di2 was not sold by us."

He also pointed out that the frame on it's own cost £2K and Shimano Di2 is similarly expensive in his view the likelihood was that if there was a bike at the end of the advertisement it was stolen but it was also possible the ad was a con.

"We have no way of knowing if this advert is genuine, but I have to say that as far as I am concerned, anybody that uses such sites needs to recognise the risks involved. If it seems to be too good to be true, then it usually is!"

Wise words.

Interestingly he also told me that "we have notified this site more than once about potential fraudulent activity" namely people trying to pass themselves off as distributors of new and non-existent Orbea products.

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Tony Farrelly | 13 years ago
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My dream bike! And my size too… how could you never ride that!

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