Scope ecstasy and great vendor

[allan gould]

Well a few days ago I received my new WO Megrez 80mm Apo ED triplet. I have star tested it as well as passed a ronchi screen over it. I have also taken a few quick star photos to look at the amount of coma or edge distortion of stars at the edge of a 350D frame.
Ecstasy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Defocussed stars give identical patterns inside and outside of focus.
When focus was approached the circles collapsed to a perfect circle and point of best focus was easy to see.
Ronchi test showed no turned edges, astigmatism surface ridges or hollows or any defects. Perfectly straight lines evenly spaced inside and outside of focus. As near perfect as I can tell.
Photos of a star field taken before the clouds came in in Brisbane, show stars in the center and at the very edge of the 350D field of view are identical and small round spheres with no spurious colour.
I purchased this scope from Andrews Communications.
Why mention it? Well the first scope had CA, SA and astigmatism.
Within a heart beat Lee Andrews said send it back and he would replace it immediately. Within 3-4 days I had my replacement scope which as you can see delights me but I am also very appreciative of the quick and professional manner in which the scope was replaced with no questions asked. Brilliant service and thats why I try to support local vendors who may not be able to match some of the OS prices but they certainly can match it in customer confidence and service.
Thanks Lee for your integrity.

[johnno]

Hi Allan,

Like you,
I too, have allways found Lee Andrews to be very helpful,and accomodating,
Unfortunately,not ALL, of his Staff,are as good.

Regards.
John

[ving]

i too have never had problems with andrews :)

i rang them up for a quote on an heq5 a couple of days ago, got a price that undercut the other stores by a little bit and wondered if i should go and pick it up or have it posted... so i asked how much it would cost for postage to my home. Lee said he would drop it off himself! now I am guessing that he may very well live near me but still, thats damn good of him! :D

I'll order either this week of next :)

one has to realise tho that they have a communications side to the business (hence the business name) and if you get one of thier comms guys they probably wont know much about telescopes.

[g__day]

I'm a happy customer of his too!

[joe_smith]

me to :thumbsup:

[mercedes_sl1970]

Ditto! Have always found Andrews Comms to provide excellent service.

[Geoff45]

What worries me is the quality of the first scope. You don't expect to pay 2 grand for a scope and find it has problems like this. In this case the problems were easily identified, but what about scopes that are marginally bad, or sold to people who don't know how to evaluate a scope, or what to expect. I know from my own experience that WO can produce a superb scope, but what's up with their quality control?

[allan gould]

Point noted, but I don't expect Andrews Comms to be able to inspect each scope they send out (it would be nice though). I agree that WO should have picked up some of the defects in QC - but there you go in a mass produced scope I had to rely in the end on the vendor to do the right thing by me. Any manufacturer has the same issues no matter what level they operate at and as has been noted in this forum any scope with a good reputation will occasionally throw up a lemon (ie Celestron 9.25 SCT?).
I could have had hassles over a long period of time to sort out this problem but Lee Andrews stood right up front and rectified it. And from what I see on the web, WO also stand by the quality of their product.
I was sorely tempted to go the ED80 route but I knew that if I was one of the unlucky sods that wound up with a scope marginally off the end of the quality control spectrum I would have faced the comment "its within specifications" and that would have been it.
But I'm happy with both the product and service. And also I should note that I paid nowhere near 2 grand for the scope - again a great price and that I have no affiliations whatsoever with Andrews Comms :)

[Geoff45]

I was more having a go at WO than at Andrews.

BTW the 2 grand figure came from the Andrews site for the 80mm super triplet APO package ($2219), but I guess that's not what you bought.

[ving]

sorry geoff, but allan is right, the qc problem is with wo not andrews. andrews didnt create the bad scope, and when it was pointed out that it was faulty andews replaced it. they cant be expected to test every telescope thats shipped to them can they? onya Lee :)

[Geoff45]

I agree entirely. The problem is with WO and they need to look at their QC. There are just too many similar stories (eg on Cloudy Nights) about WO products. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

[ving]

but on a happy note, i just ordered my heq5. Lee said he'd most likely drop it off tomorrow :D