From my experience both Bintel and Andrews give good service and know their stuff.
Regarding your question re other brands- Australia is not a big market, so we don't have the variety that they have in say the US. We do pretty well though, and most of our suppliers are competitive. (Besides which, a lot of scopes are made by the same factory, but simply re-badged.)
Bintel
do stock Orion scopes, but most are the computerised versions which are more expensive.
BTW, Astronomy Alive have the collapsible Saxon dob if you want to fork our another $50 - $100 for ease of lugging it around or putting in the car. (
http://www.astronomyalive.com.au/adv...telescope.html)
You cant really go wrong with any of the 8" dobs as a good value scope.
Have fun!
- Dean