If you’re looking for cheap scooters, look no more. No, I’m not going to give you a link or a commercial to some site that sells cheap scooters. I’m going to tell you my experience with cheap scooters in the hope that you stay away from them.

I bought some cheap scooters for my sons. I figured they’d be cheaper and safer than motorcycles, because they are easier to ride and don’t reach such high speeds. I didn’t go for the big names, because I thought they were too expensive. Instead, I bought some cheap scooters that had already been used. I figured they would be a bit more than bicycles, so I just looked at the price tags and selected the cheapest that I could find that were still in working conditions.

The first mistake was a great overlook of my part. My oldest son told me they didn’t need licenses to ride their scooters, and I believed him. Of course, one of them was arrested and I had to go pick him up and pay a fine. I also had to ride the thing back home, and then come back in a taxi to go get my car.

I paid for a course for each of my sons and they paid the license exam and fees themselves, out of their allowance, which just means that I ended up paying for that as well. I also discovered that they needed helmets, so I paid for that rather than risk having them sneak out in their cheap scooters without a helmet.

Then, about a month later, one of the cheap scooters broke down. Since I bought it from a person, we didn’t have any guarantee. We took it to a repairshop only to be told that the spare parts would take 3 weeks to arrive, since it was a very old model and spare parts were difficult to get. Of course, the bill to fix it was nothing to scoff at either.

It had been more than a month and the parts needed to repair the scooter hadn’t arrived yet, when the other scooter had a problem as well. This time, it was the lights. At first, I just forbade my son to ride it when it was dark, but upon the insistence of my wife, I had to take it to the repair shop as well. Of course, the bulb was so specific that it had to be imported, at a great cost and time.

The second scooter was still in the garage, waiting for the bulb to arrive, when the first one broke down again. This time however, it was a problem with the breaks and almost caused an accident. That’s when I decided it was enough. I sold both scooters as soon as I could for a ridiculously low price.

So, in the end, those cheap scooters turned out to be much more expensive than what I thought.