A bit of fun: classified ad bugbears

"Alloy rims"

I picked up a Marin Pallisade trail from ebay a few years back. Local pick up and quite cheap.
Listed as xl, in my defence the 2 pics werent great, but its a marin, so you know what youre getting. I thought would be idea as a commuter.
Off i go to get it, guy answers the door and he's about 6'5" "About the bike"
Wheels out the bike and its a 16" frame :facepalm:

He said he'd been riding it fine I pointed out he must have looked a complete dick at his size riding such a tiny bike, but I bought it anyway, stripped it , kept a couple of bits and got my money back.

Or the Klein mantra.the purple blue finish, which i did like Guy arrives to drop it off but failed to tell me, and only pics from the left side, of the huge stripped area on the right side of the main frame, which he'd painted with some sort of tar :facepalm:
Got the bike in and it clearly had been ridden to death. Every part was well worn, but I worked it back to some reasonable condition, replaced bits, got a bit of use and sold the frame on, getting at least most of my outlay back.

Deffo a case of buyer beware when it comes to buying anything that has poor or few pictures.

oliverrr":37d03i58 said:

I've seen many ads that don't have a specified price. Instead they have something like "If you're really interested you will offer a worthy price for the bike".

That's slightly annoying from the perspective of a potential buyer but as said before, could lead to a bargain.

Click to expand...

In my (tightfisted) experience it usually means the seller has an unrealistic value in mind, and often get a bit upset about it

Re:

Like no offers, no price screams I fully expect that the seller knows they are trying it on

Re:

On ebay, the ads with just the default text. How lazy? Then jot answering questions.

Mentioning an issue in passing in the description and not showing and pics, or worse still, a deliberately blurry pic.

Fully working, but pics contain a whole host of issues suggesting the opposite.

There is a cannondale jekyl swing arm on ebay right now with a dirty great crack down the middle. Description says something like, you may be concerned about the crack, don't be its fine.

They want £60 plus post for a bit of scrap.

Then there is the 'rare' which means crazily overpriced for a bit of tat. There's been a kirk on ebay for £1k for as long as I can remember.

Re:

Just testing the water.
Open to offers.
Not bothered if I sell.
Also-a 2009 chainset is not vintage!

I've also seen many ads with excessive yet vague descriptions:
"The bike is built to ride on all kinds of different roads: smooth pavement, dusty gravel road or even bumpy forest trail."

It still might be useful for people who have no clue what they are buying.

No description except “If you are reading this advert you know all about this...”

Re:

Advert doesn't have a set price but contains a line something along the lines of "No lowball offers, I know what I've got"
Yeah? then how come you haven't priced it accordingly you prat?

This one ticks a number of boxes, but it's the backward fork (and is that a disconnected cable?) that makes it special.

Definitely a case of 'buyer beware'