Fuji Marseille for $700?

An acquaintance who I quite like and really want to trust would like to sell me his 2 or 3 year old Fuji Marseille for $700. Aluminum frame with carbon fiber rear, carbn fiber fork. It has all Ultegra componenets, except for FSA cranks, SRAM castette. Ritchie wheels and cockpit. He's throwing in some pedals, not clipless but good for me for the short term. He says he's put around 1500 miles on it, and he's a professional mechanic so I think it's been kept in great condition. Is this a good buy at 700 dollars or is he asking tfor too much? Any feedback ASAP would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Not familiar with that bike per se (check it out on ebay or just do a search online on roadbikereview.com or google in general to see people's impressions and what it used to sell for), but knowing nothing about the bike, $700 will buy you a new road bike with bottom of the line shimano equipment on it. To get a road bike with all Ultegra from a bike store you'll need to spend twice what he's asking. 1500 miles is nothing. The bike will likely have nicks here and there (nothing a new bike won't have after a few hundred anyway), so based on that I would say that if it's in good condition $700 sounds like a good price. I'd definitely take a used bike with Ultegra components (and presumably matching quality cranks and wheels) vs a new one with shimano sora and the weight associated with that. If you buy this bike, chances are that if you get into racing and lose you know with total certainty that it's your fitness and would have a really tough time ever blaming anything on the bike (assuming also it fits properly).

Thanks very much for the reply. I'm glad you didn't say it sounded like a ripoff, because I went ahead and bought it yesterday. Had a fantastic forty miles on it with one exception. The front derailluer is unreliable in shifting from the smallest to the middle gear. A little over half the time it doesn't shift and I get that god-awful grinding sound and have to shift up and down and around all over again to get it to settle on one of the gears. Does that sound like something that can be made right with an adjustment or is there something really wrong with the bike?

That is almost certainly a minor adjustment and something you can do yourself. I assume that at some point it did shift properly, so the derailleur probably doesn't need to have its ranges set (it has a min and max range). This is likely a result of cable stretch, which can always happen and is no big deal and is why the cables have barrel adjusters (twist along some length of the cable where it goes into the frame and that will tighten/loosen the cable. Try tightening the cable in this manner. If that isn't enough, then you may need to unscrew the cable fro mthe derailleur if it's stretched a lot and tighten it up in that manner, but if it's not going properly from small to medium, I bet the cable just needs a tiny bit extra tension!