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There's always two sides to a story, but usually they overlap somewhere in the middle. The ads quoted here all claim it to be in excellent condition. Since it's a photographic mount, it should be easy enough to demonstrate the level of performance it is capable of delivering by showing some of the incredibly sharp and well guided images it must have acquired while serving in the observatory?
Most gear of this quality is usually advertised with PEC graphs, autoguider outputs, or at least an example of an image. +-3" is pretty damn good performance, and as Carl Sagan said - 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. If it was only ever used visually, then it is disingenuous to describe it's performance, because these problems will not show up visually.
Having said that - these things are exposed to the elements when they're working, so it's unrealistic not to expect it might need a bit of work. Even ultra premium mounts like the DDM85 require new bearings eventually! Pity mine needed them sooner rather than later...
Anyway credit to Simon for sticking with it, staying within the facts, not getting personal and not enumerating his mates who will come looking after school is out...
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