Skywatcher price rises?

[FLO]

We have received a number of enquiries asking whether the prices of Skywatcher PRO telescopes are set to rise. In this month's Sky & Telescope magazine, Skywatcher's American distributor has announced that Skywatcher ED DS PRO telescopes prices will rise by 10% end of February. Here in the UK there has been no official notification of a price rise, and we are not expecting one.

Otherwise we are as much in the dark as you...

Hope that helps

[George]

Thats a pretty steep rise considering how fragile the worlds economy's are.

[FLO]

So far it appears to only apply to the US

[russ]

So far it appears to only apply to the US

Payback from the Chinese for the Google saga and supplying Taiwan with shiny new guns.

[Ogri]

Steve I think your email system has a problem (it might be mine but I don't think so, as I just had outgoing and incoming mail delivered ok).

"This is the Postfix program at host cust-smtp-193.fasthosts.net.uk.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the message returned below.

The Postfix program

<questions@firstlightoptics.com>: host mxf1.xilo.net[193.238.80.41] said: 550

Rejected - Listed in dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net (in reply to RCPT TO command)"

Was after info relative a Celestron 102mm Wide View Spotting Scope to fit on a camera tripod dad has, but I suppose it comes down to just how unweildy a ST120 with AZ3 would be to take on a motorbike in a holdall on a luggage rack, compared to a ST102 with AZ3?

An ST120 might give me a more versatile platform to experiment with filters, along with stopping the objective down to 100, 90, etc., to see how much light I can cope with (I do think moon and planets may be right out of the question for me to view, unfortunately). So do you think the ST120 would be worth the difference over the ST102 for the added versatility (having enough extra light to scrub off with the filters I need, so to speak, and maybe leaving me the sort of performance people with good eyes might get with the ST80 or even the ST102, plus those filters, along with being a bit restricted to deep space stuff, should counter any major chromatic aberration issues the ST120 might have)?

Dad's also interested in some cheap rings to go on his Heritage 130p tube, so he can use it with his camera tripod (and maybe my AZ3 when I get one).

Sorry to put it here, but have tried phoning, and no joy.

[FLO]

Sorry to hear you can't get through, our phone has been in almost constant use today.

I confess I don't understand the error message in your post but will pass it on to someone who does.

Please PM me your tel number, I'll phone you

[leeq]

Typically a 550 error in Postfix is due to the Mail Transfer Agent failing to verify an address, either the senders or the recipients, in this case the recipient (in reply to RCPT TO command). it can occur when an MTA cannot talk to the recipient's mailer daemon or the next hop MTA.

In other words...Steve, you email was knackered today sir

[SteveL]

in addition, the extra rejected info states "Rejected - Listed in dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net" so the message is being blocked as spam. This means that someone else on the same network block as you has been marked as a spammer, and so the mail server is rejecting mails from your netblock (i.e your ISP and their netblocks).

UCEPROTECT®-Network - Germanys first Spam protection database

[skye at night]

Typically a 550 error in Postfix is due to the Mail Transfer Agent failing to verify an address, either the senders or the recipients, in this case the recipient (in reply to RCPT TO command). it can occur when an MTA cannot talk to the recipient's mailer daemon or the next hop MTA.

Eh!?!

[leeq]

Gotta love the way Xilo.net are using a German spam DB for blocks on a fasthosts.net.uk CIDR block in Wales... I mean I knew they charged money to get out of Wales over the bridge but that's just going too far

in addition, the extra rejected info states "Rejected - Listed in dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net" so the message is being blocked as spam. This means that someone else on the same network block as you has been marked as a spammer, and so the mail server is rejecting mails from your netblock (i.e your ISP and their netblocks).

UCEPROTECT®-Network - Germanys first Spam protection database

[FLO]

Thank-you for your comments but I am not sure I understand the conversation.

We received roughly our usual number of emails that day so the problem was either temporary or specific to Ogri's email.

Is there something practical I can do to reduce the number of errors like this?

Thanks

[leeq]

Not really Steve,

As you say it was an isolated incident. Basically email today uses a verification system between servers to try and ensure that no one maliciously "injects" an email in the stream so to speak. They do lookups to ensure that the sending and receiving email addresses are valid, as it's typical when distributing spam to 'spoof' the sending address so that it is untraceable.

In this case there was a little twist as your email provider uses a German database of locations of email spammers as another criteria, before it will accept an inbound email. In this case, the block of addresses the sender was coming from seems to have had an email spammer on there at some point and was registered in that database, so your email server denied the transfer of mail and you never saw it.

Thank-you for your comments but I am not sure I understand the conversation.

We received roughly our usual number of emails that day so the problem was either temporary or specific to Ogri's email.

Is there something practical I can do to reduce the number of errors like this?

Thanks

[FLO]

Thanks Lee, knowing that a percentage of legitimate enquiries never reach us is frustrating to say the least.

[Simonl]

Hi Steve

Do you deliver to Switzerland? I'm thinking of the Skywatcher 200p on the eq5 mount. If so any idea of postage costs?

Cheers

Simon

[FLO]

To send a large package like that to Switzerland using our current carrier (Fedex) would be prohibitively expensive. But, we have just negotiated better rates with UPS so should be able to offer a lower price towards the end of next week.

Please contact us (using the link below) with your address, we will then quote for the telescope and delivery as soon as we are setup with UPS.

HTH

[Simonl]

Sent you a PM.

Thanks

[Ogri]

Lee:" I mean I knew they charged money to get out of Wales over the bridge but that's just going too far :p"

Actually it's to get in to Wales, not out. If you ride a motorbike, it's free to get in too.

Thinking about it, there's been some strange e-mail marketing happening round here recently. I've had marketing e-mails from local people that haven't knowingly sent them. So it may be tied up with that.

I'll email from my AOL account and see how that goes.

[FLO]

I hate Spam!

FLO has not and will not send Spam so if you receive anything like that that appears to come from us please let me know asap.

[arad85]

I hate Spam!

Actually, I quite like it. It's just getting it out of the cans that's difficult

Ahh... how satisfying... a spamming post about spam

[FLO]

[Ogri]

Lol!

I hate AOL e-mail, every time I start doing an e-mail, something happens, it times out, and I lose it.

Trying again now.

[hawker]

Hi all,

I am completely new to this but having been looking at a few SW scopes over the past few days i have noticed the prices have gone up (about 10%) -is this with all the different types???

Will it also rise with the mounts?

[John]

Hi all,

I am completely new to this but having been looking at a few SW scopes over the past few days i have noticed the prices have gone up (about 10%) -is this with all the different types???

Will it also rise with the mounts?

Welcome to SGL

I think any rises discussed in this thread (which is over a year old !) will have taken effect now.

[FLO]

Whilst this thread is a year old and the price rises did take affect, hawker has spotted this year's price increases being applied.

At 5pm yesterday Skywatcher's UK importer issued a new trade price list. I am sat at home with with strong coffee and a laptop applying the updates to FLO's Skywatcher prices. Pretty-much everything is affected.

If you discussed a purchase with us yesterday and want to place your order today please email questions@firstlightoptics.com. Where we are able we will respond with a discount-code that will reduce the cost down to yesterday's pre-increase price. Some of the price increases would cause us to lose money if we sold at pre-increase price so we will only be offering the reductions to those who are already in discussion with us.

HTH,

Steve

[John]

Thanks for that clarification on this years situation Steve

Sorry if my earlier post caused any confusion