I would consider... used tandem shopping....
HI
My wife and I have been riding a tandem of one type or another for more than seven years. We were offered a ride on a friends tandem first and thought...we'd try this for the right price! I ride about 5,000-7,000 miles a year on a single and so we wanted something decent....
After some study we found a Santana that had to be over ten years old for $1,200 that was in Phoenix and we were in the Central Coast of California. We got lots of pictures...then found a tandem shop in Phoenix and asked the folks there to bring the bike into that shop for an inspection...we had previously asked the shop to do this for about fifty or a hundred bucks... since we thought the tandem was waaaaay cheap...New Santana's of that type were then going for over $5,000
shop inspected, approved, and for a fee, shipped. We got the tandem, pedals, two pairs of shoes, two helmets, lots of spare parts, a bunch of water bottles, etc....in other words...the folks who sold this bike had probably had it sitting in the garage for most of the ten or so years and hated it...and were unloading shoes, helmets, pedals etc... kind of a nice deal...
We rode that bike for three years including a lovely tour of Vermont in October...great fall colors...but unfortunately found that an uncoupled tandem shipped from CA to VT costs $400 round trip on motor freight. About that time we decided to find a coupled tandem and sold our Santana... Got more than we paid for it and so we were happy.
Some searching and waiting and searching some more let us find our current tandem... a comotion copilot that we found for under $3,000... a great deal! It is a fab bike...and so far we have shipped it to WA for the STP and to New Zealand for a ten day bike ride...
I guess my advice is to shop all the tandem sites...find them on google....and look and search roadbikereview.com etc... you will be amazed at the $7,000 to $10,000 tandems you can find for less than half that amount and generally in great condition. Be sure to either personally inspect the bike or have a shop you have found, hired and talked to ... inspect the bike. Preferably, if you find one too far away to look at, you arrange with the bike shop to handle your sending the check to them, their packing the bike and shipping it to you, and them then handing over the check to the seller...
Anyway, definitely look for a coupled tandem if you have any intention of travelling....our trip to NZ cost us $0 to send the bike instead of 300-500 for an uncoupled tandem.
good luck