Aarghhh... customer service at Celestron

Well, I tried to get an upgrade for my scratched C9.25 alu tube with one of the newer carbon-fiber tubes.

Got zero points on my scoreboard. Celestron refuses to sell the item separately because they reserve cf tubing for new telescopes only. I tried asking them for the producer so I could get one myself, reducing the cost of a custom made tube and taking the benefit of serial produced tubes, but this was refused too. The last reply was "You can try the internet for companies that may make you one, but the cost would be very high.".

No wonder why I like my AP Starfire so much. At least a company which knows what customer support is.

Grumble.

Dodi

Did you raise it to the "next level" (i.e. talk to a manager)?

I've gotten a lot out of Meade by being persistent, and in one case, going up the corporate ladder another step or two. I have a LX100, that is just like an LX200 with the exception that it isn't GOTO and has a tangent system for DEC. After having the scope a few years, I tried to get into photography and discovered the DEC movement was WAY too slow. Went a few rounds with customer service. Sent in the motor (checked out okay). Sent in the base (checked out okay). Even talked them into sending me the wiring schematics to see if I could "trick" it somehow. They were even going to provide a custom handcontrol that would work, except it too would have a couple of quirks. I was really impressed with the attempt at service, though it did go on for months and months.

I finally discovered it was a design issue. The LX100 DEC motor was identical to the LX200 DEC motor, so it thought it was powering a direct drive instead of a tangent arm. Through experiments, I proved that all I needed was the right fork assembly (which houses the DEC motor) of a LX200. My customer service rep did NOT want to do that. One excuse was that it wouldn't work. Another was that they didn't want a hybrid out there in the field (hybrid? apparently they don't visit many star parties!).

In the end, I eventually went a rung or two up the manager ladder (nicely and with respect) and got them to send it to me. I bolted it on, plugged it in, and it worked like a charm.

As for going to the manufacturing source, I once tried that on another product. Price was too high since I wasn't ordering 1000+ units.

Jeff
http://www.mindspring.com/~jeffpo