I'd Like To Acknowledge Biketrac Customer Care

Through various misadventures, some of my own doing, I’ve claimed for total loss and few times, some crash damaged, one stolen and my experience is the protected no claims bonus is a stealth tax, your insurance is going to go up anyway because you made a claim, you never lose all your NCB (if you have a wedge to begin with) you’ll lose 3yrs worth which in my case has never resulted in anything nearing a £100 increase the following year.
Obviously everyone’s situation is different, I’m old(er), I live in a favourable postcode (apparently), keep it in a garage, and I don’t own £20-30k motorcycles, but for me PNCB doesn’t add up.

As for trackers, Do Biketrac or datatool etc actually send the heavy’s round to get you bike back? Because if your relying on the police then good luck with that, I think vehicle theft is low on their agenda and it’s insured anyway so your going to get paid out so no one looses, apparently.
And what these devises save you on insurance will take years to recoup on what they cost to buy.

that’s certainly my experience, I had a bike stolen, long before the days of trackers but the DVLA kept me updated on the whereabouts of my bike when someone tried to apply for a log book for it. I obviously gave all these details to the police so effectively the same as if it had a tracker and they didn’t do anything.

 

As someone else experienced, I called Bemoto back last month (a day after sorting insurance on the SF) to advise them it had both Datatag and Biketrac, discount as a consequence…..£7.

Hadn’t really thought about it but if my bike gets stolen it impacts my NC’s does it? Not like an “at fault accident”, so if so I can’t imagine it jacks it up horrifically. Then again, few can explain insurance profiling.

 

Unfortunately I had a total loss (theft) on my V4R last year. It had a Biletrac fitted but it took the scrotes all of 18 minutes from first lifting the bike to find it and rip it out. Hence no recovery and the total loss claim.

Whilst I have 9 years PNCB I have been spanked mercilessly both on my multi-bike and multi-car policies.

All I would say is that the Biketrac log (until ripped-out) did provide an incontrovertible audit trail for my claim. Not to be easily discounted as it meant the claim process was relatively painless.

 

A friend of mine had one fitted to his lovely Pani. Bike was stolen in Central London, he saw it put into a van from a distance. Tracker activated and my mate called police immediately, he gave them a running commentary of where the Bike was going all the way to Limehouse Link, a journey of nearly an hour and then the signal was lost forever. The whole time the police said they had no units to assist during the entire phone call, so it has its good points, but unfortunately with the lack of police resources available there is little chance of an interception by Police, very few police cars have the tracking tech onboard.

 

^ this is a big problem nationally, and I bet most criminals know it

 

And naughty speeding motorists.

 

Biketrac were very helpful a month ago regarding the transfer of my old unit to the replacement. However, they insisted on the dealer fitting it which I managed to get included. Only problem, same as the original fit, being that it was fitted under the seat next to the battery. i.e. obvious and vulnerable.

I repositioned it last time and hid the connection and wiring. Going to have to do the same again.

Tackled Biketrac over this dealer path of least resistance at the NEC. They said that shouldn't happen and gave me a card for one of their fitters who would reposition it at a cost...

 

I understand Biketrac wanting to control who installs their product. If it were a DIY job then their failure rate would, no doubt, be higher. However, I think they need to maintain standards and train and check-up on the dealerships they have on their authorised installer list. Both dealers that fitted mine are on it, both did a slap-dash job.

Not that I'm an electical engineer, but a mechanical one by training, though I'm confident I can do a reasonable job. Far better and more concealed than the two dealer fits that I've experienced. A more time consuming job of course but more effective and with decent connections and cable routing.

One of the Biketrac YouTube videos, an interview, has the proprietor stating that they don't show images of the device in photos and videos as they don't want to reveal what they look like... come on FFS...

 

Does anyone else think the monitoring of the units have become much more sensitive? Used to be able to push the bike a few yards at a petrol station but I trigger an alarm every time now?

 

Mine has always been this sensitive. There was an extensive period where I only got a text and an email, instead of a phone call. I then discovered there was an option to change this in the settings... Must have done this inadvertently, either that or Biketrac switch to this if you have too many alerts in a given time. I frequently forget to switch on the ignition when either moving the bike out of the garage or cleaning it.

Also, as you're probably already aware, you can set the device into physical movement or geofence mode. For the latter you can also set the radius of the geofence the vehicle has to breach to trigger an alert.

 

I think I might switch to the geofence option and see how it goes when I’m on tour. Mine went off this year when I just shut the top box a bit too forcefully!

 

With geofence enabled, on the default radius, you might get an alert when parked in a garage, underground car park or even a city street with tall buildings due to wandering location due to poor reception. Had to extend the fence to 100m when bike was in my garage.