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I am selling a bike to someone I don't know from Craigslist. I expect that the prospective purchaser will want to test ride the bike before making the purchase.

How can I prevent them from riding away with my bike during a test ride?

Argenti Apparatus
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Stephen Meschke
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9 Answers9

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The simplest answers are ask for their ID, or for their car keys if they arrive by car. There are plenty of other options on various forums like

https://www.bikeforums.net/general-cycling-discussion/446194-selling-bike-craigslist-test-rides.html

https://www.bikeforums.net/general-cycling-discussion/687171-how-do-you-let-potential-buyer-test-ride-your-bike.html

pateksan
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    Problem there is that you don't trust them with your bike, but you're asking them to trust you with something much more valuable. – David Richerby May 28 '19 at 17:25
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    @DavidRicherby my ID would be much more valuable to me than a used bike, but not to the used-bike seller. There have been a number of times when I've been asked to leave my ID for security while handling or trying out valuable items. – jeffB May 28 '19 at 20:03
  • @jeffB I've left my ID with bike shops when trying out a bike. But for a private sale, I'm not convinced I'd be happy with that. – David Richerby May 28 '19 at 20:45
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    Clearly this all depends on where you live. In the UK the police will never do anything more than provide a reference number for the insurance, so it's up to the seller to protect themselves. Unless of course you say it was hate crime but let's not open that can of worms. There are also several factors to how much a buyer will value their ID: cost and inconvenience of replacement, risk of "ID theft fraud", perhaps if dealing with a dodgy seller attempting to flog a stolen bike etc (naturally I mean this in a general case, OP please do not feel offended). – pateksan May 28 '19 at 21:26
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    How about taking a copy of their ID (Or a photo on your phone)? The knowledge that you know where to find them if they steal the bike should be a deterrent. Of course this implies you are somehow able to verify that the ID is genuine. – Matt Holland May 29 '19 at 00:24
  • @MattHolland +1, if the person cannot handover their original ID, take a picture of the ID at least. And while at it, taking a picture of the person sounds a good little idea. I don't think they would object if the reasons are clearly explained while taking their consent. YMMV – Kiran Kulkarni May 29 '19 at 07:27
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    But.. if the buyer comes in a car, can't you just stand next to it? Even if he flees, he will certainly come back to get his car – frarugi87 May 29 '19 at 08:37
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    Terrible advice, holding other person's ID is a crime in many countries. –  May 29 '19 at 11:44
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    @9ilsdx9rvj0lo Could you specify some of these countries? This is the first time I hear about this. – HAEM May 29 '19 at 13:29
  • @HAEM I was refused when giving my ID as a guarantee in Austria (I borrowed skates at an ice rink). They said they cannot accept it. They did accept a driving license. – Vladimir F Героям слава May 29 '19 at 19:15
  • When keeping an ID or taking a photographer of it Oberrohr had to ensure compliance with privacy regulations. ID documents contain data of a high class of protection, such as eye colour, age, or height. For example, in the European Union one has to take extra precaution such data cannot be accessed by third parties and that no records are kept. The place that refused the ID of @Vlafimir F might have done so for that reason. – gschenk May 30 '19 at 20:30
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    @HAEM – for example Czech Republic or Slovakia. Leaving the ID to someone else (for example when renting sports equipment) is forbidden by law. You cannot give it away (except of handing it over to write down its number etc.) nor they can request it from you to hold it until you return. – miroxlav May 31 '19 at 11:22
  • ID doesn't make much sense - in countries where people are required to have an identity document, then won't the purchaser need to have it with them on the test ride? And in other (more civilised) countries, you can't expect everyone to have such a thing. Much better to hold the purchase cash as the surety. – Toby Speight May 31 '19 at 13:26
  • Just to be specific Czech Law 328/1999 Sb. §15a on the first line says that it's forbidden to take IDs as an insurance or entrance insurance on properties. – Tomáš Zato May 31 '19 at 14:38
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    @TobySpeight - you maybe meant less civilized. In more civilized countries, having ID with you is mandatory. The developed civilization is moving towards IDs implanted under skin (also linked to payment info and health record) what only confirms this trend. – miroxlav Jun 02 '19 at 09:08
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    @miroxlav, I fail to see how having one's freedom curtailed like that is in any way more civilised. But I guess this really isn't the place for that discussion, so let's just agree that we disagree. – Toby Speight Jun 03 '19 at 08:29
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Cash in hand. They give you the purchase price, in cash, and it sits in your pocket while they do the test ride.

joseph_morris
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    This absolutely works if the meeting place is the seller's home/office. If meeting at a public place, the buyer may not be very willing. What if the buyer thinks the seller might be trying to sell a lemon for a high price? (No offense to OP, just pointing out the potential issue). The goal of test ride is not achieved in that case – Kiran Kulkarni May 29 '19 at 07:30
  • Meeting in a neutral or public place is a good security tip so worth bearing @Kiran ‘s comment in mind. But buyer would be able to inspect the bike thoroughly beforehand and only hand over cash when confident the bike is (sufficiently) not a lemon – Swifty May 29 '19 at 12:40
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    What prevents the OP from just walking off with the money, content that they have "sold" the bike? As a buyer, I would not fork over the full purchase price before a test ride. You've just flipped the problem around, as now the buyer needs some assurance that the seller won't screw them over. – Nuclear Hoagie May 29 '19 at 13:26
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    @NuclearWang nothing stops them walking off, of course, just like nothing stops the buyer cycling off. However, the question is asked from the viewpoint of an honest seller, and this answer is the only one which protects the honest seller fully, as both parties hold equal value at all times. If seller holds the cash while the buyer has the bike, then the bike cannot, by definition, be stolen from them. – Swifty May 30 '19 at 10:08
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    @Swifty I see your point, but the suggest isn't very useful if reasonable buyers won't agree to it - I know I wouldn't. The reason the buyer needs a test ride is to determine if the bike is worth the asking price or not, so they have no way of knowing beforehand if "both parties hold equal value at all times". If the buyer returns from the test ride and doesn't want the bike, then they will have put down more collateral than the bike is worth. – Nuclear Hoagie May 30 '19 at 12:30
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    I'd be disinclined to buy from someone who only takes cash. Maybe I'm an electronic payment snob but I just can't see why someone would not want to use PayPal or Venmo or something like that. Seems sketchy to avoid electronic payments. – Todd Wilcox May 30 '19 at 16:10
  • @Todd Wilcox depending on the place electronic transactions would take a lot of time to clear and require additional trust by one party. Or, even worse, would charge a fee for the transaction. I certainly shouldn't accept since form of payment where, for instance, 1% were lost to the likes of PayPal. – gschenk May 30 '19 at 20:44
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If you have another bike that you are not selling, you can ride next to the person test riding the bike to make sure they don't take off with it. If you can't do that, then I'd suggest you have the person test riding give you something valuable to them so they come back to claim it.

user43749
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    Go with them is excellent advice - especially if they're not familiar with your local roads. Challenge them to a local strava segment, and let them beat you just slightly :) – Criggie May 29 '19 at 00:15
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    Not sure about this. How does supervising them prevent them from riding away? Even if you are confident you could keep up with them when they make a break for it, then what? Most places don't legally allow you to defend your property with harmful force, so you're not allowed to catch up to them and knock them off the bike. It'd be harder for them to flee, but probably still possible for them to get away with it. – Jared K May 29 '19 at 18:21
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    @JaredK I agree it's not a bulletproof method, but many bike thefts are crimes of opportunity. I'd expect that most people who would steal the bike while unsupervised would be much less likely to do so if the owner is right next to them. At a certain point, a free used bike isn't worth the trouble/risk required to steal it, and accompanying the potential thief raises the amount of trouble/risk significantly. – Nuclear Hoagie May 29 '19 at 18:33
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    @JaredK For what it's worth, most states in the US allow you to defend your property with reasonable force. Sticky legal situation to defend, but not illegal in and of itself. – Monica Apologists Get Out May 29 '19 at 19:57
  • "that you are not selling" no need for this requirement - you can be selling them both and still use one – UKMonkey May 30 '19 at 09:04
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    Having a long test ride together is not uncommon when selling high end road bikes. Cyclists often meet for rides anyway. The buyer has the extra benefit of having someone who knows the bike well and helps setting it up. – gschenk May 30 '19 at 21:06
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Go to a Skatepark, usually there you have access limited by one or two doors, they are usually free, it's a good place to test a whip, you have mostly good visibility and riders, and depending on your location it may even have guards.

In this kind of eviroments if you shout "thief" or "help" skaters and bikers will help in my experience, they like their skate parks to have a good rep and they tend to push away sketchy people, altough YMMV.

dmb
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    This solution is more bike-dependent. Test riding a mountain or 'cross bike at a skate park may work well enough, but the same is likely not true for a time trial bike. – Ealhmund May 29 '19 at 19:15
  • What kind of place has indoor skateparks?? This is news to me! – Clonkex May 31 '19 at 03:24
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    @Clonkex - Scotland. It does occasionally rain here... – Rory Alsop May 31 '19 at 08:34
  • @Clonkex We have them in Chile and they are gated. I believe a couple are indoors and a bunch more are open but some of those are in bad shape. – dmb May 31 '19 at 12:04
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    Similar option is to go to a fenced parking lot. In my city there are a lot of parking lots with just one exit. – Volodymyr Smotesko Jun 05 '19 at 11:08
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I've just sold a bike. The buyer left their bike locked to the fence next to myself place. I offered to test ride as long and far as they consider necessary. If they wouldn't have turned up I should have waited there until they recovered their bike.

If that would have taken unusually long I should have put my own lock at their bike and inform them via email or text message.

gschenk
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    +1, especially for "If that would have taken unusually long I should have put my own lock at their bike and inform them via email or text message." – Kiran Kulkarni May 31 '19 at 11:58
2

If the buyer has a bike, ask them to bring it with them. If they dont, ask them to borrow a mates. Then both buyer and seller can ride their own bikes for test ride. The potential buyer can ask the seller to demonstrate the functionality of the bike whilst riding alongside on their own bike. A rapport might develop during the ride and the seller be willing to offer the buyer a ride with the security of having the potential buyers bike.

Julian French
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A lot of people are saying to take the ID, but isn't checking the ID sufficient? Besides, there are other things, like a bank statement, which confirm the name and on top of that their address.

I guess if you live close to the buyer you could ask to meet them at theirs. You see them leaving their house, how exactly are they going to hide from you?

Another idea is to pick a good spot. A tennis court for example would be naturally closed off, stand next to the only gate and voila, they'd have to use force to get away with the bike.

Also, sometimes just the good-old first impression is sufficient. You can base the decision of whether you will let them try it out on that.

Tryb Ghost
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    Some decent suggestions here, except for the last one. Most people thought Ted Bundy was an OK guy - if the average person can't spot a psychopathic serial killer, what makes you think you can determine a bike thief from a brief interaction? Also, what is a "bike statement"? – Nuclear Hoagie May 29 '19 at 14:46
  • @NuclearWang: I think the idea here is that if you know their legal name (from just checking their ID), you can report them to the police if they don't come back. But agreed, the other ideas are much better. – Peter Cordes May 29 '19 at 20:57
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    "but isn't checking the ID sufficient" no - going to the police and saying "this person took my bike - here's their ID" has a lot more weight to it than "Joe took my bike, I know it was Joe because he showed me ID".... – UKMonkey May 30 '19 at 09:06
  • @UKMonkey I don't know, it feels like the name would have been mentioned in some online exchange prior to the selling. However, nothing stops a person from registering with false names on selling portals, which is why I suggested to confirm it is their name. Although here in UK they wouldn't care whether I did have their id or not, from my experience they don't really catch thieves anymore. – Tryb Ghost May 30 '19 at 10:18
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    @NuclearWang That's what happens when I want to write bank but the questions is about bikes.. – Tryb Ghost May 30 '19 at 10:19
  • @TrybGhost sure they do - but if they can't identify your bike, and don't know where to go; then there's nothing they can do. If you have your bike marked and present to the police the ID of the person who took it - they certainly will. Look at it from their point of view - are they really going to put multiple man hours to locate a bike with just a name (that you might not remember perfectly)? Or will they just put the couple in to visit the address you've given them to get the bike that you've tagged with UV markings? – UKMonkey May 30 '19 at 12:24
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    @UKMonkey Surely taking the ID is better, but I myself would be uncomfortable with that. Last thing I heard of police was that a women was trying to get her stolen bike back and had arranged to meet with the 'seller' of her bike, but the police told her they will not go with her due to security concerns. In the end, she had to go alone and steal her bike back. Not to mention how if someone steals from you nowadays the police get back to you so late that any video-monitoring system has already had the day of crime overwritten. My closest family has experienced this. – Tryb Ghost May 30 '19 at 13:15
  • @TrybGhost I've experienced that personally ... but it's not the same as holding the ID of the person in your hand saying "this person has my bike". – UKMonkey May 30 '19 at 14:12
  • Where I live, it's not legal to take passports and IDs from people, unless they were lost and you're retrieving them to the police. – Tomáš Zato May 31 '19 at 14:29
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You are not a bike shop. You are under no obligation to provide a "test ride". The buyer should already know whether the bike will fit them by inspecting it in front of you. Otherwise, and especially if this is a valuable bike, you would treat it like any other valuable buy-sell transaction.

If you're selling a diamond, for example, the buyer could not be certain that you are selling a real diamond unless you both go to a jeweller's for a consultation. Likewise when selling a used car, you are under no obligation to be in the car with a stranger for the test ride, especially if, say, they come clad in biker-gang attire. The best you can offer is to drive behind them to their choice of a professional mechanic in town. For a bike, it makes perfect sense, especially for the less-than-very-knowledgeable buyer, to visit a bike shop for a (paid) 10-minute consultation. The fee of the consultation would have to be negotiated. Alternatively, if you shop regularly at one particular LBS nearby and the staff there know you, they might conceivably offer a confirmation, gratis, that every component is in good condition—perhaps with the knowledge that if/when you free space in your garage, you'll be back for an upgrade.

There is an inherent trust in buying used products, and an inherent risk. If you have the expertise, and you own a bike stand, you can somewhat alleviate their concern by hoisting the bike on the stand and going through the steps you would yourself go through if you were buying a bike, new or used—presumably you'll come across as someone who's not trying to rip them off, if you're explaining what you're doing and establish trust during your own testing. (Whether knocking 10% off the price is palatable will be a different issue.)

If you want to go by trust, and/or the bike is not too valuable, you can simply rely on the network or social media identity (corporate email, established Facebook account, ..) of the buyer and let them take the bike for a ride if their online image matches that on the account or the web page. But sure, you could ask for their identity card. Yet if they're in any way concerned about identity theft, you shouldn't expect they'll agree.

Sam7919
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Make them bring their car and a friend (partner, familymember) and make the friend wait with you in their car. Then they have to be violent to get rid of you (forcing you out of the car) which means they have commited a much more serious crime than not returning a motorcycle.

d-b
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    Just to nitpick this a bit what would you do if that person said I'm going to get something to eat / have an emergency or just generally walk off for no reason? It's not like you can legally detain them. – PeterJ May 29 '19 at 12:18
  • @PeterJ: You combine this idea with the cash-in-hand idea. The buyer's friend is there to hold the money and prevent the opposite problem. So if they want to leave, say "ok, I'll hold the buyer's money until they get back". Establish up front that you're not ok with having both the bike and the cash leave your presence, so you don't need to worry about trusting anyone. – Peter Cordes May 29 '19 at 21:04
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    As another nitpick, what happens if the buyer rides off with the bike, never to be seen again? You can't hold the friend hostage or force them to pay for the bike, so you're just standing there with a random stranger who's saying "yeah I don't know sorry about that." – Zach Lipton May 30 '19 at 01:35
  • @ZachLipton Then as PeterCordes says, if they've got the buyer's money in their pocket then you insist they hand it over. If they won't then you call the police, because the friend is an accessory to theft. – Graham May 30 '19 at 06:41
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    @Graham the other person may simply deny you the money and walk away. If there's malicious intent involved in using the bike in the first place why would they wait for the police to show up? If the police would miraculously appear out of nowhere they could plausibly deny any involvement in the matter. – gschenk May 30 '19 at 20:37
  • @gschenk In these days of mobile phones, that's no great impediment. You simply walk after them. You take pics of them - or better, video, to document their refusal. If they get in a car then you get their number. – Graham May 30 '19 at 21:48
  • @Graham all that gets you is a video which shows you harassing somebody and chasing them down the street as they ask you to leave them alone and insist they have no idea what you're talking about. – Chris H - DE May 31 '19 at 09:55
  • @ChrisH A video of you following them, showing that you're staying polite and non-violent, and clearly showing their face so they can be recognised later. Ton do the job properly of course, the video should start when you agree rules with the buyer and his friend, so they really don't have a leg to stand on. – Graham May 31 '19 at 18:50
  • @Graham of you video the buyer before the ride, what do you need the other person for? – gschenk May 31 '19 at 20:32
  • @gschenk Still to hold the buyer's money, and to be a "hostage" if you need to call the cops, because just having a video of the buyer doesn't necessarily help track them down. Having a video of the buyer and his friend agreeing to terms, and the friend trying to get away after the buyer has done a runner, you've copper-bottomed your reason for "chasing them down the street" as per ChrisH's comment. – Graham May 31 '19 at 22:28