My New Bike, Giant – Seek 4

A couple of months ago, my bike, the carrera subway ltd was stolen.
Fortunately I had insurance that covered it, there was a £50 excess, but other than that they replaced everything I remembered to tell them about the bike.

I forgot to mention the bike lock that was on the bike (though the bike wasn’t locked to anything, hence it was stolen) and I knew I had the lights still, but forgot that the mounting points for them where on the bike. Not sure if I’ll be able to buy just replacement mounting points, or if I’ll need to get a whole new light set. But these are minor points, the main thing is that I have a bike again!

Due to the way that these things work, I didn’t get an exact replacement for my old bike. Despite the fact that the exact same mdoel was (last I looked) still available from Halfords with something like £200 off list price. Instead my insurance company does business with wheelies.co.uk I guess they get some very favourable deals for doing exclusive business with them. So although it seems to me that I could have had a direct replacement for less money, I’m sure my insurance company is still better off doing things this way.

What I got was a Giant Seek 4, and as I mentioned, they also updated the saddle, and added mudguards and a panier rack, to replace those that I had installed on my previous bike.

Due to the weather, I’ve not had it out yet, so I can’t report on whether I notice anything particular about it in use. From a purely visual inspection, it appears to be a reasonable replacement for my previous bike. With the added bonus that they got the right kind of mud guards and fitted them properly ( I told them that I had only actually fitted the rear mudguard on my previous bike because I had trouble working around the disc brakes. They said that’d be because I chose the wrong kind of mudguards for the bike, and they would do it right ;-))

Overall the process was fairly smooth. It wasn’t the fastest thing in the world, my bike was stolen on the 6th August, and my replacement arrived on the 1st Oct. Had I been reliant on the bike for anything, I suspect I would have been annoyed by how long it took. Fortunately that wasn’t the case, so I’m just glad to have been covered and to have a replacement.

Obviously it would be nice to find whoever stole my bike and see them appropriately, or possibly judiciously, punished for their crime. But I will have to settle for a replacement bike, and a much more compulsive door locking behaviour.