My new Celestron 8se is faulty

[kamanetzki]

Major disappointment. I purchased the 8SE

telescope

about a week ago and the motor on the fork arm is faulty. I tried it out the other night when we had clear skies and it would only go up and down but not across. Widescreen Centre thought it the handset might have to be "re-jigged" would would have taken 10 minutes but we tried the handset on another fork arm and it worked fine. So the whole fork arm plus handset will have to be returned to the Widescreen Centre (not their fault). They said that only 5% have faulty motors (it's usually the handset) so I'm unlucky. Fortunately I'm on holiday for 2 weeks so I'm hoping it will be back on my return home.

Has anyone else had this problem?

[Cath]

5% of what they sell is faulty ????

That's not good, their is no good reason for such a high percentage, that's very poor QC.

[DirkSteele]

Quality Control at Celestron is not what it once was if 5% is the current failure rate.

[Pig]

If our failure rate was 5% I would be sacked on the spot.

I get moaned at if the faulty unit returns rate goes above 0.05%

I think the whoever quoted that at the WC was talking nonsense.

[bottletopburly]

Bought with an inherent fault return and swap for a new replacement it's your rights by law

[bomberbaz]

Hehe, re-read the OP post guys. What the fella is saying is the 5% of all reported faults are linked to the motors, not they have a 5% fault rate on equipment. Its a read between the lines a little but (smuggly) I think you'll find its right

Edited April 30, 2013 by bomberbaz

[bomberbaz]

ps, sorry for being smug, had a **** day and needed cheering up

[Cath]

oops lol

Well spotted bomberbaz!

[Pig]

Im not sure if that's a good thing Baz, does that mean 95% of the returns associated with the goto are the handsets ? that's 2 faults in my book that are very frustrating to the user.

[Tim]

I don't understand why you didn't just get a replacement?

[bomberbaz]

Yes Pig but it depends how you view it. What that says to me is they have very reliable motors. Now I guess it depends on what the fault ratio is. If it was 5% of equipment total they would as mentioned so be in big trouble, if however it is say 0.5% (thats one in 200) that have a fault, and of those 0.5% only 5% have issues with the motors, (thats one in 4000) then I would say that's acceptable. Sorry for the math but I deal in crappy %'s every day, hah !

[bomberbaz]

Yes Pig but it depends how you view it. What that says to me is they have very reliable motors. Now I guess it depends on what the fault ratio is. If it was 5% of equipment total they would as mentioned so be in big trouble, if however it is say 0.5% (thats one in 200) that have a fault, and of those 0.5% only 5% have issues with the motors, (thats one in 4000) then I would say that's acceptable. Sorry for the math but I deal in crappy %'s every day, hah !

darn double posting again

Edited May 1, 2013 by bomberbaz

[bomberbaz]

Major disappointment. I purchased the 8SE

telescope

about a week ago and the motor on the fork arm is faulty. I tried it out the other night when we had clear skies and it would only go up and down but not across. Widescreen Centre thought it the handset might have to be "re-jigged" would would have taken 10 minutes but we tried the handset on another fork arm and it worked fine. So the whole fork arm plus handset will have to be returned to the Widescreen Centre (not their fault). They said that only 5% have faulty motors (it's usually the handset) so I'm unlucky. Fortunately I'm on holiday for 2 weeks so I'm hoping it will be back on my return home.

Has anyone else had this problem?

If you were hoping to take this on holiday but now can't, ask the shop if they have a simple display model you can borrow whilst on hols, they might have something available!

[Pig]

Yes Pig but it depends how you view it. What that says to me is they have very reliable motors. Now I guess it depends on what the fault ratio is. If it was 5% of equipment total they would as mentioned so be in big trouble, if however it is say 0.5% (thats one in 200) that have a fault, and of those 0.5% only 5% have issues with the motors, (thats one in 4000) then I would say that's acceptable. Sorry for the math but I deal in crappy %'s every day, hah !

darn double posting again

Yes we would need to know what "X" is, It could be a very small number of returns indeed.

I agree 250 Parts per million is acceptable, just

[jonathan]

I was shocked to learn that display panel manufacturers have a tolerance level for faulty pixels. Think about it - you buy a TV or a computer monitor, spend your hard earned cash on it, take it home and discover one pixel glows bright red permanently. You'd be a bit annoyed wouldn't you, but the manufacturer expects a certain percentage of these faulty panels to reach retail outlets, even though they were manufactured like that, it's not something that has happened since leaving the factory. How can that be acceptable? No faulty goods should make it to the shop, and there definitely shouldn't be an 'acceptable' percentage that do. Quality control, man.. what happened to that? Died with the British Empire.

Same thing happens with certain computer game companies - they gain a reputation for churning out buggy games, but unfortunately they also are usually very popular and (otherwise) good games.

Happy to say that the only problem I experienced with my 8SE was the power socket on the mount, I took it upon myself to replace it with something better, but even then I encountered some very odd ideas about what a BNC plug should be like from Maplin, I ended up buying one from a small independant electronics shop in town (remember them? Goldmines! So rare these days though).

Edited May 1, 2013 by jonathan

[Pyrodave]

Sorry to hear about your faulty scope hope you get it sorted pretty soon

[Kai]

Why do you think you can pick up flat screens for £50 ??

As most screens only come from one or two suppliers all you are doing is buying a different faulty pixel count depending on price.

[jjfabien]

I purchased a 8SE in December from Bhphoto. With the unit, I purchased quite a large number of accessories such as finder scope, Starsense, GPS, Wi-fi module, Wedge, filters, etc... amounting more than USD 3000. The wi-fi module died after 2 uses. The sidereal speed of the scope would desynchronise from the sky. When connecting the Starsense, It would display an error message at the startup of the unit :" Err Model Num" followed by "Critical error". Some menu items would bring up the error message. The slew would sometimes work, sometimes not. The GPS module never worked. Tried all possible trick and firmware updates which did not solve the issues. Contacted Celestron support who asked me to ship them back starsense, wi-fi and gps for replacement. The new wifi module would work but starsense would still display error message at startup as well as freezing the unit. GPS did not work again. Further enquiries from celestron support showed that the AUX connectors could be faulty. Celestron support asked me to send the motor and HC for warranty repair. They sent me an email 3 weeks after telling me that a number of repairs and changes were performed on the unit with details. When I received it from repair, it was in the same state than when I had sent it. Still not working with same issues. After complaints and rant, they offered to send me a new mount. Waiting for the new unit...