Buying a 2nd hand bike - warranty help?

[SARGE]

hit the link in the post to check out the latest edit on wikihow.. been some work on it since i originally posted it

[FJRider]

When you buy a bike from a dealer, all details regarding warranty period(if any)of the bike in question, will(should)be on that form. At time of sale... you sign it to say you agree to that.
After that period is up .......

[Forest]

Consumer garantees act covers you, it covers the bike for its expected life time - not sure what a bikes life time would be but i'd assume 10 years or 100 000km give or take.

Total bitch going through that system tho

There's no hard & fast rules for used bikes.

The CGA looks at what a 'reasonable consumer' would think was acceptable. This takes into account all the factors which surround the sale i.e. price, information given by the dealer, wear and tear etc.

[slimjim]

question...lifetime of a bike..? 3yrs from date of manufactor...any idea..

[MarkH]

Toddled down to a local (unnamed) dealership on weekend and saw a 2nd hand bike (only a few years old) that would suit me, but when I asked about warranties they just kept saying consumer guarantee act will cover it and telling me a vague "we will fix it, depending on how long you've had it and the distance you've travelled", but would not give me a timeframe or distance. A bit non-committal I thought, and leaves a lot of room for argument.
I also asked if they service the bikes before selling and I was told that they get a 'check over'.

Is this the norm? Or am I expecting too much to have a xx month warranty (or xxx kms)? Or shall I run scared?

any opinions / suggestions appreciated

I suggest this:
Either tell the dealer that without an expressly written warranty you might as well just buy something similar for less money from tardme or find a dealer that gives a warranty, or just go elsewhere and avoid dealing with this particular dealership.

Only a few years old? For a year or two old and low Kms I would expect a reasonable bit of warranty. For a few years old I think you want to see at least 3 months warranty written on the sale agreement. Generally 3 months will be enough - any underlying problems when you buy it are likely to show up fairly quickly. Any problems that surface after more than 3 months - well you can pretty much expect to have to fork out some money to sort them I suppose.

One important consideration: If you can find the same thing on tardme for less money then you can keep that money aside for any work that you find needs doing. If you were to save $1000 then you would need to have some bad luck with problems costing over a thou before you were worse off compared to buying from a dealer. I would stop and consider this fact before writing off the idea of buying privately.