eBay telescopes

Hey folks,

I have been seeing these 6 inch reflectors on eBay for around 100 - 200
bucks....

I have emailed some of the purchasers and they see happy with them. I
currently have an ETX 105. Iwoudl like to get one of these to play with
and see the deep sly objects better. What should I expect from one of
these scopes??

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tegory=28 181

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=2955258 910

The two links of examples are above...


you can email me at:




regardss



Mike

Iwoudl like to get one of these to play with
and see the deep sly objects better. What should I expect from one of
these scopes??

Hi:

Crap. Sorry to be abrupt, but there you have it. These are extremely poorly
made scope with fast sperical mirrors. Pass 'em by.

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

On 07 Oct 2003 02:27:44 GMT, (Rod Mollise) ...reflected:

Iwoudl like to get one of these to play with
and see the deep sly objects better. What should I expect from one of
these scopes??

Hi:

Crap. Sorry to be abrupt, but there you have it. These are extremely poorly
made scope with fast sperical mirrors. Pass 'em by.

They come in six different "flavors," and all showcased by the same
"Smilin' Sam." I wonder what percentage he gets...

The blue one sho' is purty!

You know, if you could get it for less than $100, then it might not be all bad.

I wonder what brand it is...

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

Alan

Rod is the man to listen to on this. I've always been a firm believer that
you get what you pay for. Cheap price = cheap quality.




"Rod Mollise" wrote in message
...
Iwoudl like to get one of these to play with
and see the deep sly objects better. What should I expect from one of
these scopes??

Hi:

Crap. Sorry to be abrupt, but there you have it. These are extremely
poorly
made scope with fast sperical mirrors. Pass 'em by.

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

I have emailed some of the purchasers and they see happy with them.

I hope you asked them specific questions.
Questions I would consider of interest:

How was the star test, how much detail was visable on Mars? Was the scope able
to split the double-double, how about Rigel, Izar and Zeta Orionis.... How
was the collimation?? Does it hold collimation well? Is the focuser smooth
and tight so the eyepiece does not rock back and forth?

Was the mount smooth and stable? How long did the focuser vibration take to
damp out. Are drives available at a reasonable cost?
----
I have never seen one of these scopes in person and I imagine I never will.
Looking at the photos of the scope and knowing something about scopes in
general, there are some obvious issues with these.

1. Under mounted. A 6 inch OTA that appears to mounted on a EQ-2 which is
marginal for a 4 or 5 inch scope. A decent mount is one of the two important
parts of a good telescope system.

2. These scopes are Short tube newtonians. Their focal length is 1400mm
(55inches) but the scopes are much shorter. Such scopes generally use
spherical mirrors and then a barlow like lens to lengthen the effective focal
length. Even with a high quality design this does not to well.

The 8 inch model of these scopes has/had a 750mm focal length, F3.75. Such a
fast mirror definitely needs to be parabolic and yet when someone here bought a
couple it turned out the mirrors were spherical.

3. There is no stated optical quality.

4. A quote from one of the vendors:

"There are no returns, warranties or exchanges on this item. ALL SALES ARE
FINAL."

Shipping is around $40-$50 dollars on these.
-----
I think these scopes are purchased by people without adequate knowledge to
evaluate the scope.

-----

If you want to buy a larger scope, consider buying one from a vendor who can
provide support in the long run. Buy one that is adequately mounted and is
easily fitted with drives (or buy a DOB.)

IMHO, compared to your ETX 105, these are quite crude and will be diappointing
for you.

jon

1) People who are disatisfied with a product on ebay do NOT leave negative
feedback for fear of retaliatory negative feedback from the seller. Also, ebay
rules stipulate that if you have a problem with a product that you contact the
seller and try to resolve it before leaving feedback.
2) People leave feedback immediately upon receiving a package as long as it
arrives in good condition. It takes a long time for an inexperienced observer
to determine the quality of a telescope, and by the time they figure out that
it isn't exactly the best value for their money, they have left positive
feedback long ago.
3) Most ebay newbies don't leave feedback at all--they have never heard of the
feedback system and don't know what it is.
Larry Brown
ebay powerseller platinum

"Larry Brown" wrote in message
...
1) People who are disatisfied with a product on ebay do NOT leave negative
feedback for fear of retaliatory negative feedback from the seller. Also,
ebay
rules stipulate that if you have a problem with a product that you contact
the
seller and try to resolve it before leaving feedback.

I happen not to agree with you, Larry, particularly when a new ebayer is
involved. In my opinion the ebay feedback system works fairly well, but is
a very long way from the state of perfection. As I see it, perfection will
not come until ebay gets more involved with the feedback system. This is
the primary reason why I have not used ebay in years. But getting back to
your statement above...

I believe that most ebayers (particularly the new ones) are very free with
feedback, particularly negative feedback. If ever you have the time, you
could check this yourself by cross checking each negative from a short list
of ebayers. If you ever do this, I would be interested in learning what you
find.

Al


2) People leave feedback immediately upon receiving a package as long as
it
arrives in good condition. It takes a long time for an inexperienced
observer
to determine the quality of a telescope, and by the time they figure out
that
it isn't exactly the best value for their money, they have left positive
feedback long ago.
3) Most ebay newbies don't leave feedback at all--they have never heard of
the
feedback system and don't know what it is.
Larry Brown
ebay powerseller platinum

I happen not to agree with you, Larry, particularly when a new ebayer is
involved.

I think the fact that the sellers of 8 inch Newtonians with F3.75 spherical
mirrors had near perfect feedback is an indication that the system does not
work. For some reason those scopes are no longer being sold.

jon isaacs

Al,

Thanks for the comments.

First, let me say that I don't want to get off-topic and I don't want to
create a thread about ebay here, except as it relates to all the astronomical
stuff that is sold on ebay.

Second, please note that I sell bridal accessories for weddings, so this can be
considered a totally non-commercial posting, unless you want to buy a tiara for
your telescope :-)

Third, I don't think we are entirely at odds here--we are just coming at the
system from two different viewpoints. Here is my experience: As a seller (up to
250 auctions a week) I have found the feedback system to be the most abused
thing on ebay. So that you can see that I know what I am talking about, here's
my feedback profile:
http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAP...princessbrides
After two years on ebay I only have about 7000 feedbacks even though I do about
10,000 sales a year because most of my customers are new to ebay, (they have a
0 and a new logo after their name) and they don't know about the feedback
system. We give them a note with their tiara to let them know about feedback,
and about 1 out of 3 of our customers actually use it.

We have 11 negatives, which came from customers who had some small problem and
did not bother to contact us about it. They just left the negative as if it
were some sort of "rating" system, which it is not. A negative feedback, by
ebay's definition, is supposed to represent an unresolved problem. When you try
to leave a negative feedback, you get a warning that specifically tells you to
contact the seller and attempt to resolve the dispute before leaving the
feedback. They ignore this and leave a neg anyway. Both ebay and all the
powersellers out there consider this an abuse of the feedback system.

To handle feedback, I use a software program that automatically leaves a
pre-written positive feedback for every buyer who leaves a positive feedback
for us. It ignores neutral and negative feedbacks. We have so many that it is
impossible to leave them manually. Many power sellers do this.

We never, never leave a negative feedback, even though about five percent of my
buyers never pay for the auction they have won. (Brides change their mind a
lot). I don't want retaliatory negatives. This is the main reason I only have
11 negs out of nearly 7000.

When a customer writes to us and request a positive feedback, they
automatically get a form letter which explains how the software works. They
always respond by leaving a positive and they get a positive almost
immediately. If all of my customers left feedback, we would have more than
20,000 feedbacks by now, not just 7000.

Now, here is a major problem with feedback as it relates to astronomical stuff
sold on ebay. Buyers of this stuff are not going to be brand new ebayers,
driven to ebay by rave reviews on some bridal site. They typically have
established a feedback record. As soon as a buyer establishes a 100% positive
feedback record, there is no way in the world they are going to want to ruin
that. First, if they have a problem, they are more likely to contact the
seller to try to resolve it. Second, even if it isn't resolved, they are not
going to risk ruining their perfect record by leaving a negative since they
might get retaliatory negative feedback in return. Many buyers state right in
their auctions: "Please attempt to resolve any problems by calling me,. I leave
a negative for every negative I receive!"

My employees spend hours looking at feedback records. We read negative
feedbacks, we look at the other products our customers have bought (if they are
not brand new) and we use this information to determine how to handle problems.
If we get threatening letters from a hysterical bride, we immediately check her
feedback to see how she worked with other sellers. When a buyer with more than
three negs bids on one of our auctions, we cancel her bids and add her name to
our blocked bidder list.

When you buy an astronomical product from ebay, please be aware that the
feedback record is only a general guideline, not to be taken as an absolute
indicator of trust. If you are buying something expensive, you must dig deeper
before bidding. Contact the buyer, phone him if necessary. You can tell pretty
quickly in a phone conversation if the seller knows anything about astronomical
products. If you are bidding on an apochromatic refractor, you better dig
really deep!

One last interesting story. We had a woman win 12 of our auctions. We checked
her feedback when we noticed that she was bidding on multiple items. She had
over 12,000 positive feedbacks and no negatives, so we let her bids go through.
We figured she was a dealer who was going to resell the tiaras in her shop (we
get a lot of dealers who bid on our products). She proceeded to pay for none of
the items she won, and she didn't respond to any of our emails. When we checked
her feedback one more time, we found that she had received 30 negatives in one
week, from sellers who were not paid. Talk about going down in flames! I
emailed some of the other sellers and we learned that she was a compulsive
ebay buyer and that her husband had pulled the plug on her computer. She was
banned by ebay (you get banned for 3 negs for non-payment) but that didn't
help us recover the money we had spent on listing fees and photos (about $6 per
auction). Our lesson--you really can't trust feedback! When you are a power
seller, you have to go on your instincts. It isn't just a buyer beware
market--it's a seller beware market. It works both ways!

To sum up: negative feedback doesn't really mean very much. You have to view it
in context and see how many positives the seller has received.
In some cases, positive feedback doesn't really me an very much. I also buy a
lot of astronomical products on ebay and after awhile you develop a
sixth-sense. A red flag will go up sometimes when you are bidding on something,
and it is difficult to explain why--but if you get a bad feeling in your gut
about an auction, you better do a little more checking. I also buy and sell on
astromart, which I much prefer to ebay.

Hope these observations help.

Again, thanks for your comments.

Clear skies.

Larry Brown


I believe that most ebayers (particularly the new ones) are very free with
feedback, particularly negative feedback. If ever you have the time, you
could check this yourself by cross checking each negative from a short list
of ebayers. If you ever do this, I would be interested in learning what you
find.

Al

Al wrote:

Larry,

I am humbled! How could I disagree (150 feedbacks) with a guy who has about
7000. We live and learn each day and I learned today.

One word, however, about telescopes or related equipment auctions on ebay.
I usually steer away from a dealer's auctions on ebay. It's not that
dealers are all dishonest (there are more than a few), but rather what they
are usually selling is not always a standout buy. I look for private
individuals who are selling a one of a kind item...something that they
purchased, used and no longer have a need to use. I find that the feedback
profile is more meaningful with these individuals and the item they're
selling is an honest and good buy.

Al

Al,
You are absolutely right, which is why I buy almost all my astronomical stuff
on astromart. I pick up a few antique telescope items on ebay (parts,
eyepieces, or whole scopes), but only because antique stuff almost never
appears on astromart.
Clear skies.
Larry