They can't make any money if they do a decent job building it up. And would get fired for being too slow anyway. It's no wonder they can't get anyone that knows what they are doing. A proper bike mechanic would probably charge most of what that bike costs to get it in good shape, why should they subsidize someone's bad choices? If someone has the skills and wants to fix it themselves, that's fine. But I think most people that have skills would buy a much better used bike to fix up, at least I hope they would.

I don't like to waste money, but on my new bike, the wheels are going to cost $1000. I feel like that's worth it. And they aren't going to last 20 years, if all goes well. Because I'm going to ride them a lot. No 20 year old tires, that's for sure.