lol Jeanette, you should be a salesperson for iOptron! Yes, people who feel ripped-off are often the more vocal and get heard more often. Thanks for the Users Group site, I'll have a good look at it later. I can see where user-error is amking an impact in the comments. Some of the alignment issues are common across brands, imo. The alignment proceedure, to me, is no different that for a Meade, and I know from experience there how much familiarity with the mount makes a difference in accuracy. But I'm not looking at buying this for the accuracy. What I am attracted to is the flexibility of it - a perfectly working Mini-Tower would meet most of my current needs from a bit of wide-field imaging to occultation work (which is why I was pleased to see it would handle an 8" SCT) I'm not a hard-core imager, so using it for serious deep sky imaging is not the intention. I've dabbled enough in imaging to know that I would need something much more substantial for that.
I've never been a big fan of gotos, probably because I was around when they first entered the market and I've never really thought that they've lived up to the advertising claims, plus seen too many people struggle with them, and then had my own encounters with them, so I tend to approach gotos with a degree of skepticism and dont expect them to work perfectly.
The other point that came up was that if I was to buy a wedge to go with it, I would have to by an upgraded unit from Trapezium Telescopes anyway, as they found the factory bearings weren't up to the job on a tilt.
Dont worry, its still at the top of my list at the moment, something I could get without having to save another years worth to get it! It would get me going sooner rather than later. I've been putting things off long enough!