Over the last week there have been a spate of bike thefts in the Harlow area and various appeals have been made on communal websites.

Personally, I have had two bikes stolen from me. The first theft was down to my own carelessness. My friend and I had tied both of our bikes together using a scrawny cable lock… The second was stolen from the gate outside my student digs. This was simply bad luck.

On this occasion I had two locks, a big chunky cable lock and a combination lock. The key slot in chunky cable lock became corroded so I took it inside and had planned to fix it. On that particular day, someone had guessed the combination of my remaining lock correctly. I know this because the lock was left there in-tact. My theory was that they were going at the combination for weeks and got very lucky with the timing.

Two fairly dissimilar thefts but one result. To my regret, I never saw my bikes again. This was despite informing the police and personally searching for my bikes for days after the theft had taken place. In my experience, once they are gone, they are gone. These days even a D-Lock doesn’t cut it and won’t stop an experienced thief.

These thefts happened in my student days; working at GuardHome has given me an entirely new perspective on protecting your belongings. I found it was the regret of my own bad luck or naivety and the anger of not being able to confront the criminal that got to me most.

Whilst we haven’t yet come up with a product to protect your bikes in public; we will always recommend a GuardHome alarm in your home or garage to prevent similar thefts from occurring.