"Busted" U-lock - Krytonite's Bizaro Policy

The CityPaper has a follow-up article to their bike theft article; this one on how to break a U-Lock.  You can see my response in the comments and then promptly ignore it. My advice has been up until now

Buy a lock with an insurance policy that covers the cost of your bike (it’s always advertised on the outside) - and no more. When you get home, sit down and read all the things you need to do to qualify for a claim and do them within the time specified. This is like a rebate, it must be done and done quickly.
Use the lock religiously, if the lock is broken and your bike stolen, hopefully you can find a part, if not all, of the broken lock. Send that back in and get your insurance claim for your bike.

That got me thinking about it so I looked into Kryptonite's Anti-Theft Protection program, which I'd always kind of promoted. Let me point out some flaws.

1. You have to submit (at minimum) your lock registration form, an itemized lock bill of sale, and a copy of your itemized vehicle bill of sale, or a dated and signed dealer appraisal reflecting market value - all within 15 days. Why 15 days? If I can get all those things together a month or a year later, why does Kryptonite care? I can't ever sell my lock or use it with another bike?

2. You can't submit this information online. Welcome to 1994.

3. If you have homeowner's/renter's insurance you have to submit a claim to them first and they'll cover the deductible and anything else your insurance doesn't cover (this is called stacking, and Kryptonite is taking the secondary position entitling them to a set-off for the coverage). I think if you're selling a lock and my bike is stolen because your lock was broken, then maybe you be primary to my homeowner's insurance. This isn't trivial. In 10 years as a renter I made one claim, when my bike was stolen. When I tried to get homeowner's insurance I was almost denied because I "made too many claims". That being one for $700. This may be more about the insurance industry sucking, but still, I think Kryptonite should take the primary position. Why make me make a claim against my insurance?

The policy about you having to send in your broken lock is kind of annoying, but reasonable. Kryptonite would be opening themselves up to a world of fraud otherwise (I guess if your bike were stolen and you didn't have it locked up, you could break your lock and send it in - but that would be immoral and a felony). So bike thieves, please leave the lock at the site. Then cyclists will have more money to replenish the pool.

Of course, after saying all that here's some good things about Kryptonite from another online discussion from 2005

If a New York 3000 is correctly attached to the rear wheel and to a sturdy steel pole set in concrete, it is NOT going to get "broken" The "rear wheel to steel pole" method does not leave enough open space to insert effective leverage tools.

Tests by "Cycling Plus" indicate that no form of "manual" attack has any hope of breaking a New York 3000. Their editors were able to open the NY 3000 after about ten minutes using very loud, very visible power tools. So, as long as you lock up in a safe location, crooks will never attempt to mess with a New York 3000 ("real" crooks being something very different than a video "staged" by the bike's legal owner...geez). A crook can steal twenty bikes that have a Wal-Mart U-lock with less time and effort than trying to break one NY 3000.

Someone else advises

You can go to the Kryptonite website, go to "Powersports" and you can see two other NY locks that are thicker and stronger than the NY 3000 bicycle lock. They have a higher security rating on Kryptonite’s scale, and if I remember right a higher $$ replacement policy. The 3000 is a good lock but it's NOT Kryptonite’s strongest, most secure, NY lock. The other two locks are heavy, but I don't mind lugging mine around sometimes. They have the same lighted key, the same colors etc.

And someone who presents themselves as a Kryptonite employee says

we really do pride ourselves on our customer service and we try hard to work with everyone. If you've registered for the anti-theft protection offer and your bike gets stolen but you don't have every single piece of information, call anyway. We will try to help as much as we can.

One other thing, in general, no matter what brand of lock you have, please do read all about the anti-theft protection offer in the packaging. Some brands do not cover messengers/couriers (we do!)

That person also talks about the Fahgettaboudit. Then there's this piece of advice

Don't EVER put a U-lock around ANY part of the frame. Putting a U-lock around the frame may tempt a "half-bright" crook to use the bike itself as a lever to break the lock. And, the result is massive damage to the frame. A U-lock should be placed around ONLY the rear wheel, just behind the seat tube. That position makes it impossible to separate the wheel and frame from each other.

I'm guessing they mean within the bottom triangle? thoughts?

So my new advice is buy a kick ass lock, sign up for theft prevention, and lock the rear wheel just behind the seat tube. But that may change after I read the comments to this.

Photo by benjaminmyklebust

Comments

[washcycle]

This post was accidentally deleted and recovered thanks to Google Cache. These are the comments it had.

"Why make me make a claim against my insurance?" Would you want to pay more for your lock? If the bike lock insurance was primary, it would likely cost a lot more and that would be built in to the price of the lock.

"I'm guessing they mean within the bottom triangle? thoughts?"

This is the Sheldon Brown lock strategy. http://www.sheldonbrown.com/lock-strategy.html The problem with this strategy is the bike *looks* insecure and a stupid thief may try to mess with it.

Mike

As Mike said, the whole lock the rear wheel idea sounds good in theory but in real life we are dealing with both with experienced bike thieves and crackheads.

A experienced bike thief will know that a lock through the rear wheel is secure; whereas, a crackhead will look at two bikes one typically locked around the frame and one atypically locked around the read wheel and think "oh hey I should be able to tear the rear wheel off!"

Colin

A friend of mine had a bike lock frozen a couple of years ago in Columbus, OH. The key would go in and turn, but the lock would not disengage. Naturally, I parked in the "no parking zone" next to the bike rack, plugged my Dremel into my car's power converter and spent 10-15 minutes cutting through his lock. Several cops drove by, but nobody said anything to us. Perhaps they thought what we were doing was so obvious that no thief would ever try it.

Don't assume that just because a thief would have to spend a long time getting through your lock that somebody would notice and stop him.

Robert