[glend (Glen)]

Planetman I understand your viewpoint completely. However, as a retiree I have a limited amount of money to spend on astronomy and need to maximise the capability I gain for the least amount of $ invested. This forces me to seek low cost solutions, and while it may at times be a false economy, generally I get good results. Sure I'd love to have a 16" Meade LX600 but that can't happen unless I win the lottery; while GSO for example (Taiwan based, and not to be confused with mainland China) makes very good equipment for the cost, so the value proposition is excellent in my opinion. Some of their equipment quality is ahead of the more expensive competition - like in the Azimth and Alt bearings for example. Looking at it from a $ per inch of aperture, it's hard to walk past them simply for the sake of pretentious branding. Sure Televue makes great stuff, but does the cost reflect the incremental increase in quality or is it more related to branding strategy.

Internet shopfronts are a problem I agree, but some like Agena Astro seem to be doing great things for astronomy. Most trusted, and well regarded, Australian suppliers also have bricks and mortar presence and staff to talk to about problems, but this is also reflected in their pricing, which comes back to the problem of maximising return on the $ invested. Some like Andrews Comms, manage to undercut their competitors by buying in large quantity, and never opening the boxes but just onshipping to the end customer -but there is no middleman distributor as far as I can tell. It's when you get an internet shopfront, with a hidden multi-step supply chain, that it gets really complicated when there is a problem. In the case of the Astroshop (a front for Binary Systems Pty Ltd) , it appears that they sell via the web with no bricks and mortar presence, then send the order off to a distributor ( a separate business entity) who picks the order from their warehouse and ships it out. If Support is required they then refer the customer off to a third-party who supplies support under a contract arrangement. Add to that mix a product with a questionable origin and quality issues and it's high risk - hence my problem.