The Chainlink

Maybe check here if you had your bike recently stolen?

This place will pretty much buy any bike that is brought in to them- no questions asked. I know this because I live very close to this place and they offered to buy my bike, for a ridiculously low price, when I went in there once to buy a tube. 

I just read a review on Yelp about the place, and here is a link to the review: http://www.yelp.com/biz/shining-bikes-and-things-chicago#hrid:pQ4Mi...

 Here is the text of that review: 

If you live in Roger's Park and you're bike has recently been stolen, chances are it's probably at this sorry excuse for a bike shop.

Last summer, my bike was stolen from my apartment hallway landing. I was enraged. I had an idea of who stole it but I could not find him nor any evidence pointing to him. That same day I also had a job interview on the other side of the city. I hacked up my skirt and went across town.

As I proceeded to my destination, I passed Shiny Bikes on the bus ride over there. Out front I could have swore that I saw my blue Schwinn 1975 Varsity just sitting there. 

So I go to the job interview, get the job, and I come back to Shiny Bikes. The girl at the desk asked if I needed help, and I told her I was just going to look around. Lo and behold, there's my bike at the back of the shop with my bike lock still on it.

I immediately bring this to their attention. "Hey, that's my bike. Someone stole it today and there it is."

"Well, how do we know that it's yours? Do you have anyway to prove it?" One of the guys asked. Fortunately I had my bike lock key with me and I unlocked the bike lock. "Oh, well it's hers." The employee announced.

So everything is going relatively fine considering I managed to find my stolen bike. The employee begins to phone the owner of the shop. The owner on the phone says that I need to PAY THE PRICE THAT THEY PAID FOR MY STOLEN BIKE. Because THEY ARE THE VICTIMS IN THIS SITUATION.  This is grade A bullshit. With any Capitalist business endeavor there is risk involved. You may, or may not, make your money back on your investment. This is not only  exclusive to bikes, but to everything in general. The risk is much greater when you choose to BUY STOLEN PROPERTY. So I promptly told him no, I didn't force them to make the decision to buy a stolen bicycle WITH THE BIKE LOCK STILL ON. Later on he came to the store and we went to the local police station to file a report. Hopefully the bastard who stole my bike had to pay some sort of fine. 

So yeah, never set a foot in this place unless you're looking for your own recently stolen bike. The owner of this shop needs to do the neighborhood a favor and close this place down.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on April 25, 2012 at 11:37am

Not even a little bit of a surprise.

Permalink Reply by Melanie K on April 25, 2012 at 11:54am

I know it's not much of a surprise, but I felt that it wouldn't hurt to put the word out to check the place if your bike was recently stolen. 

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on April 25, 2012 at 12:35pm

I am sorry to say something that sounds like a defense of one of the most-hated shops in Chicago, and am not offering any judgments as to the veracity of this Yelp report, but FWIW on a handful of occasions I have suggested to victims of thefts at that general lattitude to take a look there, but have never had anyone locate their bike there and on more than one occasion the victim reported back that the people there were "very nice."

Permalink Reply by Melanie K on April 25, 2012 at 1:12pm

I understand that this shop may not have stolen bikes on a regular basis, or maybe it was just a bad reviewer on Yelp. I posted it because I have been in there a few times and the vibe there is just, well, shady. I admit that the owner of the place has always been nothing but nice whenever I have went there, but his employees/relatives that were working there usually didn't seem to give a damn and never seemed to know much about bikes or parts.  And the one bike that my husband and I had looked at and actually considered purchasing there about a year or so ago had the serial number filed off which raised some suspicions in our minds-needless to say, we didn't buy a bike from them.

It could be that since the owner buys bikes to resell that he sometimes gets a stolen one here and there, maybe not intentionally, but the place does buy bikes from people looking to sell them, so I thought it may be worth a shot to check it out if someone has had their bike stolen.  

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on April 25, 2012 at 2:29pm

This is the shop that kicked me out for looking at the serial numbers on the bikes they have on the floor...

Permalink Reply by Ash L. on April 25, 2012 at 4:17pm

A couple of years ago, before I had heard the rumors about this shop, we got a good deal there on a 12" Specialized kid's bike here for my then 2 year old. I didn't know at the time what these bikes retailed for but realized there was a solid possibility that it could have been stolen when I went to Kozy to move up a size last August. I hope I didn't inadvertently crush the dreams of some poor 3 year old girl.

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