My girlfriend is looking to get her first road bike and I've found a specialized dolce 2005 in okay condition going for £150. Do you think this would be a good price and decent first road bike?
A visual inspection will not show you if the chain is worn or if the cassette and crankset are knackered.
Worn drivetrains behave normally on the flat, but are next to useless under any sort of load (like a small hill or a quick burst of stand up power on the flat).
To test the bike properly, you'd have to take it out for a proper ride (a gentle potter along a flat residential street for 20 yards will not tell you anything).
If you spent a few quid on a chain checker tool
like this one, you could establish in a second whether or not the chain was worn (and by extension, the cassette and the crankset).
You could also ask the seller how much the bike has been used?
I have a mate who bought a very impressive MTB back in 2006 and he went out on it twice in sunny weather and on flat cycle paths (one of the rides was at a Centre Parcs and he bought a bike carrier so he could take it there).
It's been sat at the back of his garage ever since.
I'd hazard a guess, but I'd say that the vast majority of bikes bought from Halfrods et al, end up at the back of garages with no more than 20 or 30 miles under their belts?
Fact is, if you do your due diligence, you could end up with the bargain of the century. If you don't, you could end up buying a nice looking frame needing £500 worth of parts to make it properly rideable.