Never buy a pedelec before you have intensively tested it. You better test various different pedelecs in order to understand which one suits you best. If you borrow a pedelec from a retailer during the weekend (this is recommended), it is acceptable that the retailer will ask you for an adequate fee because the pedelec will lose a little bit in value due to the usage.
Further issues:- Ask for the warranty conditions, in particular ask for written warranty conditions regarding the battery. Two years of guaranty are nowadays frequently found.
- Have a short look at the user manual. If it is apparently difficult to understand and carelessly done, it is little probable that the product will be of high quality.
- Price by itself is not in a reliable quality criteria: there are cheap pedelecs around (roughly specified by a price of less than € 1000 in regions such as Austria, Germany and the Netherlands) which are not of really poor quality, on the other hand high-priced pedelecs are not always of high-quality, in particular since the word has spread that customers prefer higher-priced products because they assume that they would be of high quality.
- Here is a small checklist in German taken as an excerpt from the test report 2012 of the German consumer association and Go Pedelec! Projektpartner ExtraEnergy e. V.. The report may be downloaded also here. You may fill in the checklist yourself during or after you have tested a pedelec.
- Ask the retailer if the pedelec has a battery which has a BATSO certificate (this regards the issue of battery safety during usage.)
