Hi Everyone,
My name is Ivan. I'm part of the team at OZScopes. I thought I would reply to the thread to help give some clarity around the questions being asked.
I completely understand that many experienced astronomers (such as yourselves
) do a lot of research around specific telescopes you are interested in buying, and search for the best prices.
Unfortunately we have such a large range of products (telescopes, binoculars etc) that making sure every product has the very best market price, compared to all our competitors, is very difficult to do. Sometimes we are able to see their price changes but many times it can slip under the radar.
To help with this, we do offer a best price guarantee on all products. This means if a customer finds the same product at a better price from another official retailer, we are happy to work on matching that price to make sure you get the best deal.
For the dobsonian telescope that you mentioned Peter (
http://www.ozscopes.com.au/skywatche...telescope.html) the reason why that telescope is at such a high price is because the telescope was a limited stock item which we sold out for in December 2010. Last year SkyWatcher brought in a limited quantity of this telescope and asked us how many we would like to order. We decided to order 1. That sold out on the 13th of December at a price of $2049. When the product was sold our system defaulted back to a non-sale price which is why it appears so high and it is also out of stock because we don't have any quantity to sell.
As for the Celestron Products, do you mind elaborating further on which telescopes you were referring to?
We are 1 of only 3 Premier Select Celestron dealers in Australia so I'm sure we can work on pricing if you're interested in a specific scope.
I hope this brings some clarity around our pricing. We actually don't advertise ourselves as being big discounters. We try to focus on quality customer service. But in the scenario that someone finds a better price we do have that guarantee I mentioned earlier.
Cheers everyone