Originally Posted by
bluefoxicy
You might be able to find a deal on a used bike. It depends on how much know-how you want to acquire, which means time you want to spend before buying. Sometimes you can find an $80 5 year old bike that street-prices for $300 and it's ready to ride; sometimes you find a $150 bike that street prices for $250 but it's horribly beaten and needs new gears/chain/etc and you wind up paying $350 in total.
The problem with buying used (if you're talking about Craigslist) is the immense amount of time you can waste monitoring CL (wading through spammers), reading ads which seem to be written by functionally illiterate people ("byke 3 sale... like knew... text me."), interacting with unresponsive people trying to find out what frame size a bike is (when everyone says "26 inch bike."). Looking at 1x2" photos. And then driving around looking at bikes that aren't advertised correctly.
People intimate derogatory things about people who shop at Walmart. But, it's been my experience that the people Craigslist is used by far more "trashy" people.
Mainly, it just seems like a gigantic waste of time. I found a Giant Cypress that truly was like new for a bargain. But, it took a lot of time and driving around looking at junk, dealing with boneheads before I found it.
Craigslist is the same gamble Walmart is. If a person sets their expectation levels correctly, they can save some money. It's not going to be without its own hidden costs. You'll have to put some sweat equity into it.