Recovery videos

Recovery case study · Hackney, London

How we recovered a stolen Tern e-bike in just over two hours

BackPedal recovery team · · 5 min read

It was taken from a locked bike hangar in Hackney just before 4am on Wednesday 16 September. The owner reported it to us just before 6am. Just after 8am, our agent had it. Here's how the morning went.

The bike
Tern HSD cargo e-bike
Worth about £4,500
Stolen
3:48am
From a locked bike hangar
Reported
Just before 6am
Wednesday 16 September
Recovered
Just after 8am
The same morning
Report to recovery
About 2 hours

Recovery video

Coming soon: Bilal's footage from the morning

We kept notes while this recovery was happening. This is the tidied-up version, with the maps and photos from the morning, so you can see what actually happens after you report a theft to us.

We've left out anything that could identify the owner.

The morning, step by step

Overnight

  1. 3:48am

    The bike is stolen

    The bike was locked inside a bike hangar on the street outside the owner's home. It had a Kryptonite lock on it too.

    Someone got into the hangar and took it. The tracker shows the bike on the move from 3:48am.

    The bike before it was stolen, with a very happy passenger.

The first hour

From the owner's call to an agent on the way: 30 to 60 minutes.

  1. Just before6:00am

    The owner reports it

    The owner got in touch with us just before 6am. The first thing we do is take a few details about what's happened. It usually only takes about five minutes.

    We're checking we have anything important that could change how we go about the recovery.

  2. Minutes later

    We pull up the tracking

    Next, we load the tracking data on our system and start going through it. We normally start with the most recent points and work backwards.

    This one was interesting. The tracker had recorded the theft itself. We could see the bike being moved through Hackney Downs, where it stayed for a little while, and then on towards the Regent's Canal in Haggerston.

    The route the tracker recorded between 3:48am and 4:41am. The satellite marker is its last signal, by the canal. We've hidden where it started, to protect the owner's privacy.
  3. Next

    One last signal

    There was one clear last signal from the tracker, at 4:41am. It was inside a gated development, right by the canal.

    We look at how accurate we think a signal is. Then we look at the spot on Google Street View and think about where a bike could be. A garage? Inside a flat? Somewhere else?

    Here, we had two ideas. It could be in a courtyard behind the gates. Or it could have been hidden on the canal side of the fence, somewhere people wouldn't normally look.

    Close up. The satellite marker is the last signal. The bigger red circles show where the tracker stopped for a few minutes before that.
    Idea one: the courtyard behind the gates.
    Idea two: the canal side of the fence.

    Street View images: Google

  4. Within the hour

    We send an agent

    By now we had enough to act on, so we contacted our agents to deploy. We send the deploying agent the details of the theft and our analysis, and let them get on their way.

    From the owner's call to an agent heading out took between 30 minutes and an hour.

    The job on our recovery system. We've blurred the owner's details.

On the ground

  1. While the agent travels

    We keep digging

    While the agent is on the way, we keep going through the data to see what else we can find.

    Two things stood out. Before its last signal, the tracker had stopped for 5 to 10 minutes at a block of flats nearby. And the last position was a single ping, on its own.

    That gave us another theory. Maybe the thieves found the tracker while they were at the flats. Then someone walked over to the canal and threw it into the bushes, or into the water.

    So we gave the agent a plan. Go to the last ping first and check it out. If the bike isn't there, go to the flats and scan for the bike's beacon.

    What if the thieves found the tracker?

    This bike also had one of our Proximity Beacons and a Sleeper GPS. They're very small and hard to find, and they give off a steady signal. So even if a thief finds the tracker, it's not game over at all.

  2. 7:25am

    Bilal is on his way

    Bilal, one of our recovery agents, heads over to Haggerston. His phone scans for the stolen beacon as he goes.

  3. 8:00am

    The beacon shows up

    From James's notes at 8:00am

    Bilal is on the ground. We've not heard from him yet, but we can see his phone has picked up a scan from the bike's beacon. I'm now 99% sure we're going to recover this bike.

    A beacon scan tells us the bike is close by. Now it's about finding exactly where.

    Turquoise: where Bilal's phone picked up the bike's beacon. The satellite marker is the tracker's last signal from earlier.
  4. Minutes later

    Found

    Bilal found it easily. It had been left on some cycle racks, unlocked. The saddle had been pulled out and left with the bike. Maybe the thieves thought that would stop anyone riding off with it.

    Just as Bilal found it: unlocked, with the saddle pulled out.
  5. Afterwards

    Back home

    Then it was just a case of couriering the bike back to its owner. Bilal had a chat with them too, and they were very happy to have it home.

    Back with its owner, saddle back in.

Why we got this one back so fast

  • The tracker recorded the theft. We could see the route and the stops, not just where the bike ended up.
  • We did the homework first. Checking the signal and looking at Street View meant the agent left with a plan, and a backup plan.
  • Backup devices. Even if the thieves had dumped the tracker, the beacon and the Sleeper GPS were still on the bike.
  • We moved quickly. An agent was on the way within an hour of the owner's call.

Not every recovery is this quick

Some take days or weeks. We keep going for as long as there's tracking or good information to follow, with no time limit and no cap on how many times we'll go out. Recovery is part of every plan, with no call-out fees and no excess.

Recovery rate
+80%
Typical recovery time
~48h
In-house ops team
24/7

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