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Leon,
My reticle came with mount and it is a standard one, delivered with new polar finders, it seems. That means, it has both northern and southern marks.. I am pretty sure that if you purchase new Orion finder, it will have that reticle. If not, you are still left with Octans asterism - it is easy to spot it in the finder, once you found it and get used to it. In the beginning, and when I go out of the city, I use compass (on the stick, to keep it away from mount's steel parts) for rough orientation. Then, it is either drift alignment or visual with reticle, depending on what I want to do. Also, my mount has bubble level (original one was not very sensitive so I glued better one on top of old one), and that helps a lot.
Southern marks are characteristic polygon around Sigma Octans..
Right now, I am used to those "unnecessary" marks for northern hemisphere :-).. I guess they can be useful in case of travel.
Yes, dealers have no clue these days (I think they do not care much). Even well respected ones are not what they used to be or what they should be...
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