 Poster: A snowHead
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Terry Wells, how do you mean printed ? I've scrawled my name on mine but it's be easy to remove it.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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An alarm really isnt a bad idea and it should be too hard to implement. I dont see all that many thieves persisting when the skis they have just picked up are making a siren or similar at them.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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One guy on Epic mentioned engraving your driving licence number on the skis with a permanent engraver.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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DB, not such a good idea here in the US - you'd end up with identity theft as well as ski theft!
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| ise wrote: |
| Terry Wells, how do you mean printed ? I've scrawled my name on mine but it's be easy to remove it. |
Actually, I don't know the proper terminology, but this was done in the shop when I bought them. It's kind of embedded - there's no way it could be rubbed off.
But, I suppose that Chris M-J 's experience undermines the case. 
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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The epicski thread was talking about engraving if that is what you mean?
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When I was young we always had our skis engraved with our names - it was part of the deal from the ski shop. I don't think it was anything to do with theft though. Can't hurt, can it. Always write the serial number down somewhere you can find it - very helpful if the worst happens.
Several of the restaurants here will either lend you a cable and lock (deposit you liftpass while you're having lunch), or have lockable racks outside - very useful even though I've never used them.
Good tip - don't buy pretty skis!! Seriously though folks - I'm surprised at so many people having problems - as I said I've never had skis stolen. I leave them outside or in the entrance to restaurants all the time (and I ski 30 weeks a year). One person did try to go away with my skis once, but that was a mistake not theft. She was a bit shocked when she realised (195 K2 Comp 90's - her skis were 165!)
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Slowplough,
If you take their ski insurance and it only pays out 50% is it not their own fault...?
You aren't saying they ask you for the difference are you..??
Of course, there was wasted time but it would be the case either way whoever owned the ski.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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admin,
Sorry to hear your news. My mate had his skis pinched from the lobby of the Jump Bar in 1850 last year but I've never heard of any being nicked up on La Saulire.
Deb & I go the whole hog - split our skis, use a pair of naff S&R locks (to enable an insurance claim) & we have our names written in large letters across the tips of our ski in black indelable marked pen. It doesn't look great & we have to put up with all the "in case you forget your name jokes", but I think it's a pretty good deterent as it makes it difficult for the thief to sell the skis on etc & easy to identify as ours if they did get pinched. It also counters the "I thought they were mine" excuse that anyone caught trying to take them is bound to say.
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man thats rough, wouldnt you just love to come out the minute someone was trying to gank your ski's/snowboard, thats sucha just cause to beat the snot out ofr someone, i mean even if you cought someone steeling someone else's ski's. Maybe one day ill go up to the mountain and just hang around and try and catch someone trying to steel ski's. Ive always been tought growing up that being a theif is the worst thing you can be.
"He who has lost honor can lose nothing more."
~ Publilius Syrus
"Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud."
~ Sophocles
Brendan
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Is there a market here for skis manufacturers leaving a blank space on skis for buyers to engrave their own ID? Or to add a personal and instantly recognisable graphic that has a link to ownership paperwork? It might make thief think twice before making off with a pair of personalised skis and might also make their sale less likely.
The downside is that onward legitimate sale could be harder, and it's another cost, although for some that would be a benefit.
The other solution is to chip skis and offer owners/hire shops the opportunity to pay for a tracker service. From an owners point of view, perhaps they could "switch" on the device and pay for the duration of the holiday. I guess it comes down to the value of your skis with the hassle and inconvenience of making a claim, against the cost of retrieval and hassle of paying for yet another ski related service.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Is there a thriving market in nicked skis? If not, and they are stolen for use by the thief or his horrid chums, putting your name on will be of little use.
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Sorry to hear of your theft. Courchevel may have a great reputation as a skiing resort, (We are going there in March) but a friend of mine that has done a couple of seasons there told me that among some seasonaires theft can be a problem.
A chap from a very good background would "find" skis and because he was competing in some competitions would go once a week to another resort and sell his "old skis". He tells me this as delights in telling me that not all public school guys are fine upstanding citizens. I think he is looking forward to seeing his ex chalet mate on TV in Westminster, or a captain of industry.
Bad eggs everywhere. A bloody good hiding would do the trick if you would find him admin.
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You know it makes sense.
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I like the idea of putting a chip in the ski, somewhat similar to what they use in pets, a little scanner at the various ski shops and a reward scheme from the innsurance companies and away you go, all that you would need is for the skis to come with a form that the first owner would fill out, then they could transfer ownership to anyone else, without a record of the chip number and original owner you could not do so, so even if your mate scanned the number in a shop for you, it would be unlikely that the thief would know the original owners name so could not transfer ownership
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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chips sound a good idea - I'm sure it could be done quite easily in the manufacture.
BTW I've just had my poles nicked at the bottom of the nursery slopes! Not on purpose I'm sure - there were loads in the same place and the ESF guy probably just picked up a whole lot with mine in it. I don't really care about the poles - but the wrist straps were the old leather ones that I've swopped from pair to pair for 25 years - B**t**ds! Off to the ESF now to post a notice and also to lurk around the nursery slopes ....
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Poster: A snowHead
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I saw some Kneissel skis in Kitz that had a chip in them. Apparently they register with the ski-lift transponders so you can track their use. They were €1700 though, but I guess that's the future.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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It should be simple for the technology to be adopted by every manufacturer it may add £30.00 to the cost of the skis. Worth it in my book all it needs is a bit of pressure on the manufacturers to adopt a universal technology that is compatible with the lift systems. It needs to be an optional extra otherwise it becomes a bit big brother we know where you ski, how often you ski, which lift you use etc.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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If you just used a very simple chip like the pet tags do then the cost would be less than a fiver on the price, the pet chips have to be sealed in a substance that cannot be absorbed into the blood but you could just encase the chip somewhere in the structure of the ski for a lot less
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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D G Orf, the cost would come from registering your skis on a data base and management and administration costs to maintain a Europe/world wide system.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I would imagine that resorts with a high ski bum type element would be the worst for the stolen ski trade.
Sorry to cast aspertions on this group but my last experience in St Anton was that the coat checks were all run by
'bums' and it got quite tiresome bar hopping and paying for coats to be stored all the time and expensive!! So putting 2 and 2 together...and sorry if I am wrong here.. these type of resorts might be the ones that have a 'stolen' ski trade. It was in fact in St Anton that we 'lost' our skis.
But where ever you are some people will buy things if they are cheap enough so having tags or whatever on them wil not really
discourage them. They aren't nicking them for maximun profit, if they are desperate enough then £100.00 for top line skis is enough for them. In golf clubs there is the same problem.
Maybe the local authorities should really penalise them them if caught, like kick them out of the country and a hideous fine etc
as they are contributing to damaging the countries name in terms of tourism which are some communities lifeblood.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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I can't see a simple (cheap and convenient) way of getting the id chips to work. The villains would pretty soon find some way to extract or disable them.
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Well theoretically if the id chips were disabled or removed that would be a sign that the skis had been stolen, rather like removing serial numbers is a sign of criminal intent
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D G Orf,
But that only matters if the buyer is discerning. If the skis are cheap enough then someone will buy them and look the other way....
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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JT, perhaps no response from chip (because removed) = flashing light and hooter at lift?
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Nick Zotov,
Yes, it would need lifties to be alert to the fact that the skis have been tampered with and be able to take action.
Certainly I would support resorts throwing people out of the town for that sort of thing but whether the legalities would allow all this I don't know..
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Fair point. And pre-chip era skis would be a problem, of course.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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We're talking a big infrastructure project here, if gates at all key lifts are scanning for chips in skis. There would need to be a central registration system for stolen ids, and the numbers made available to every gate. A sophisticated encryption scheme would be required to prevent thieves from re-chipping skis with apparently legitimate chips. And imagine how you'd feel if your chip broke and you were prevented from riding a lift. Skis are subject to tremendous forces, and chips are fragile. I know there are ways of protecting them, but plenty are going to fail in practice. Sorry, but whatever way it's cut, I don't see this being workable in practice.
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I never suggested that the scanners should be at lifts, rather put them in the ski shops, there they would be able to see instantly if skis had been tampered with and also have a link to a ski database, I would imagine that 95% of people sooner or later take their skis in for waxing or edging
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You know it makes sense.
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D G Orf, all the same problems apply.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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laundryman, to address some of the problems
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There would need to be a central registration system for stolen ids, and the numbers made available to every gate
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Well substitute in the word shop for gate and you are right, but given that the shop would be registering the skis when they were first bought I don't see too much of an issue here.
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A sophisticated encryption scheme would be required to prevent thieves from re-chipping skis with apparently legitimate chips
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Not really the chips are tiny and would be burried in the ski, tampering would be imediately obvious.
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And imagine how you'd feel if your chip broke and you were prevented from riding a lift. Skis are subject to tremendous forces, and chips are fragile
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Head have managed to incorperate a sophisticated feedback system including active chips in their Intelligent skis, I'm proposing a much smaller and simpler system, the chip would be roughly 1mm x 3mm or less (I think that's about the size of the pet id chips anyway).
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I don't see this being workable in practice
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It works for pets, and there the chips are added after construction, much easier to incorperate a chip during construction, cheaper too
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Poster: A snowHead
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A chip system would only work if lifts were fitted with kit to detect the presence of a particular ski (unless you're suggesting that those who've lost skis should obtain a portable chip reader and wander about Europe (or wherever) checking similar skis). Even then, removal or other disabling would be trivially easy; only if all skis had chips would this not avoid detection.
The system works for pets because people want to return the pets to their owners; it doesn't help if someone nicks your dog.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Seems to me the easiest way to avoid getting your skis nicked is to 'uglify' them. I'm sure the scumbag thieves spot the graphics of easy to sell-on popular current models amongst the crowd and go straight to them. Perhaps there is a market for self-adhesive top sheets which make your 2005 Seth Pistols look more like 1995 Kastles at first glance. Question is how much does fashion affect the desirability of the latest skis to buyers and would they really want ugly skis?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| Nick Dawes wrote: |
| Seems to me the easiest way to avoid getting your skis nicked is to 'uglify' them. I'm sure the scumbag thieves spot the graphics of easy to sell-on popular current models amongst the crowd and go straight to them. Perhaps there is a market for self-adhesive top sheets which make your 2005 Seth Pistols look more like 1995 Kastles at first glance. Question is how much does fashion affect the desirability of the latest skis to buyers and would they really want ugly skis? |
I don't mind if the top surface looks like sackcloth. It's how they go that matters for me.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| D G Orf wrote: |
laundryman, to address some of the problems
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There would need to be a central registration system for stolen ids, and the numbers made available to every gate
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Well substitute in the word shop for gate and you are right, but given that the shop would be registering the skis when they were first bought I don't see too much of an issue here. |
It still requires *every* shop selling or servicing skis to be linked to a central registry, for them to undertake an extra process each time, all for no direct benefit to the retailer (some perhaps for those which hire skis). That's a long shot in itself, and it ain't going to be rolled out quickly.
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A sophisticated encryption scheme would be required to prevent thieves from re-chipping skis with apparently legitimate chips
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Not really the chips are tiny and would be burried in the ski, tampering would be imediately obvious. |
Maybe, maybe not. For example, I could zap the legit chip with more radiative power than it's designed to take (no visible damage), and hide another one nearby. I wouldn't underestimate the ingenuity of criminals.
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And imagine how you'd feel if your chip broke and you were prevented from riding a lift. Skis are subject to tremendous forces, and chips are fragile
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Head have managed to incorperate a sophisticated feedback system including active chips in their Intelligent skis, I'm proposing a much smaller and simpler system, the chip would be roughly 1mm x 3mm or less (I think that's about the size of the pet id chips anyway). |
Head's chips don't have to communicate with the outside world, so can be more deeply embedded. In any case, I bet they sometimes go wrong!
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I don't see this being workable in practice
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It works for pets, and there the chips are added after construction, much easier to incorperate a chip during construction, cheaper too |
See richmond's comment above. And again, I'm sure a proportion of pet chips fail during the lifetime of the pet.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Nick Dawes, Absolutley - as I said earlier - stickers, scratches etc. The top surface of the ski doesn't matter anyway (so long as you don't make deep holes). Of course it's actually quite hard to go and deliberately scratch up your beautiful and expensive new toys .............
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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laundryman, obviously you are not of the same spirit as the likes of Robert the Bruce, or Barnes Wallis. I prefer to solve problems rather than merely complain about them
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You can buy those heavy duty steel cable wires pre-looped from bike shops. Need bolt croppers to get through them. I'm debating getting some spray paint and putting a large fluro blob on each of my skis.
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D G Orf, those guys had practical solutions.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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laundryman, so come up with a practical solution, don't just say Oh it won't work let's give up on the idea. 
By the way the head chips are mounted just sub surface but the fibers they link to are integral to the ski structure it is actually very easy to mount a small ic within a ski, yes you will get occasional bad chips but manufacturers already put serial numbers on the side of skis so you just cross referance the serial number with a list of stolen skis.
An electronic list of serial numbers could be kept on the internet and updated daily or at worst weekly for a fairly low cost, a bit of software in the shops and a small chip scanner attached to a pc and away you go, in generic terms cost wise it would probably work out to about say £500 per shop set up charge, the ski makers could easily cover the cost of putting the chips in skis, the insurance companies could give a 10% reward for recovery, it would pretty much pay for itself, plus it would help catch a few ski thieves, something I'm sure we'd all appreciate
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| D G Orf wrote: |
| laundryman, so come up with a practical solution, don't just say Oh it won't work let's give up on the idea. |
I did: alarms. Only I proffered it as a potential solution rather than insisting it was the only way to go.
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| By the way the head chips are mounted just sub surface but the fibers they link to are integral to the ski structure it is actually very easy to mount a small ic within a ski, yes you will get occasional bad chips but manufacturers already put serial numbers on the side of skis so you just cross referance the serial number with a list of stolen skis. |
What do you need the chip for then? I assume the serial number can be obliterated, and equally, the chip can be disabled. It only needs a few service shops to accept the readies rather than confront potential thieves (who may be entirely innocent customers with damaged skis) and the system is subverted.
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| An electronic list of serial numbers could be kept on the internet and updated daily or at worst weekly for a fairly low cost, a bit of software in the shops and a small chip scanner attached to a pc and away you go, in generic terms cost wise it would probably work out to about say £500 per shop set up charge, the ski makers could easily cover the cost of putting the chips in skis, the insurance companies could give a 10% reward for recovery, it would pretty much pay for itself, plus it would help catch a few ski thieves, something I'm sure we'd all appreciate |
Many shops may not have existing internet connections or appropriate internal connectivity or even convenient space for the PC. That's all extra cost, plus they might regard the whole thing as too much hassle. If the business were dominated by large chains it might be possible to persuade a critical mass. Who's going to pay for people to go door-to-door to a myriad of small shops to sign them up (or not)?
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