Hi SW,

You made some good points, both here and your previous post. I'll be a bit more careful next time. I do agree that we don't want people to not like folding bikes because they get a bad first folder.

Here's one problem as I see it:

There's a big difference between somebody who's looking for their first folder who knows a lot about bikes and someone who doesn't. If it's the latter, it is much harder for them to evaluate the condition of a used bike. This puts people without experience (or without a friend with experience) at a big disadvantage.

A used bike is almost certainly going to need a tune-up and have some parts replaced. This is not a big deal at all for somebody with some experience with bikes, but can be quite troublesome for new riders. I know that Origami, for example, does tune the bikes up before they send them out (which depending on what happens during shipping may or may not be sufficient). We've seen the owner of Origami post repeatedly on these forums trying to make sure that his customers are happy and getting their bike up and running. To me, that's worth a lot. I've recently had not such good luck trying to get parts for another manufacture's bike from the manufacturer itself.

In my garage at the moment I have both a Green Zone (several years old) and an Origami (and even a friends Downtube 9 with front suspension). The frames are similar, but one big difference I found is how the stem folds. It is a much more significant, solid piece of hardware on the Origami than the Downtube. I can't yet say much about the rest.

The reason I find this relevant is that what I was most disappointed by in my Green Zone was the folding stem. I can replace the derailleurs/shifters/brakes easily enough if I want, but the folding stem is problematic to replace and in the case of the Green Zone, it wasn't very effective upon arrival (again, my Green Zone is several years old and this may have been addressed, although from the pictures it looks to be the same mechanism). As another poster in another topic pointed out, it's often the potential of the bike that's important.

I haven't looked, but I'm assuming there's a sticky post in this forum that talks about these issues. Maybe standard protocol ought to be to link this post for new posters so they can get the back story, while also suggesting that they post their intended usage, bicycle experience, and even location (as I've noticed several members here will do a CL search in different areas of the country for new posters).

Cheers,
Charles