Someone got a bargain!

[Adrian]

I put a £500 bid on that - but just a second after the winner Thought I'd put £600 like I meant to and the couple of seconds it took me to work out what the problem was meant I didn't have time to up my bid:(

Oh well, next time...

[ScubaMike]

I suppose it's always a risk buying second hand from eBay (or SGL or ABS) but you can get good deals if you're willing to accept that if something goes wrong you've got to sort it out yourself.

John

Agree to a degree.

If it develops a fault, I would initially try to get him to deal with it.

If all else fails, I paid with a CC via paypal, so I would get the CC company to sort it out. Don't know how long that protection lasts, but I'd cross that bridge when I get to it.

After 12 months (from reading other posts) I'm in exactly the same boat as people who bought through "Authorised Dealers".

You make your decision, pay your price, and deal with it.

If the scope was "meant" to be sold anywhere in the EU, Celestron cannot say it's an grey import and not honour the warranty. I think they'd have problems under EU law if they tried that (I believe this was tested when people started to buy cars on the european mainland and importing themselves to the UK).

At the moment, I'm very pleased with the equipment and have, on that basis, no hesitation in saying I'd buy from the same source again if I was making a similar saving.

[Multi-Coated]

For me , with that level of saving and from what SM says I'd take the chance . Really can't expect a long warranty if a huge saving is genuine .

[Whippy]

If the scope was "meant" to be sold anywhere in the EU, Celestron cannot say it's an grey import and not honour the warranty. I think they'd have problems under EU law if they tried that (I believe this was tested when people started to buy cars on the european mainland and importing themselves to the UK).

David Hinds are the authorised Celestron distributor for the UK, Ireland and Scandanavia. If the scope was originally bought outside of these countries then they have every right not to honour the warranty even if it was tranferrable between owners, which I believe it isn't. So to my mind, you can't expect the manufacturers on a grey import or even buying a 'new' scope from someone who isn;t an authorised dealer.

Tony..

[philhas]

With respect Phil, a quick glance is not going to tell you that a complex scope is OK. It's only when you press it into use, star test it, run the GOTO in various modes etc that you find out that all is well (or not).

I realise that the subject of this thread is an optical tube but Scubamike has bought a complete scope and a pretty sophisticated one at that - personally I would want some certainly that I would get some proper support if things go wrong for at least the 1st year of the scopes life.

I'm probably too cautious though

Lol, nothing wrong with being cautious, as I said before its ebay, you pay your money and take your chance. A daylight test on a distant chimney pot can tell you an awful lot about a scope and if you picked it up you know where they live! In this case another member has successfully bought from the same person so its fairly low risk apart from....the warranty which I agree could be a sticking point. I bought a celestron SLT Goto second hand and managed to test most of the features during the day, although I would be more cautious if I was spending a larger sum of money such as this.