HeavensAndEarth.com NOT recommended

Hi All,

As some of you may remember some time ago I posted on the site about building a dobsonian. www.irishastronomy.org/boards/viewtopic....=1077&highlight=

That was waaay back in october. However due to a disastrous sequence of events in purchasing the mirrors from canada from heavens and earth www.heavensandearth.com I have not made much progress!

Basically I submitted my order to them in early november for the mirrors, finderscope and a few more bits and pieces. They got back to me straight away saying they needed to figure out shipping and would be on to me in 24 hours. A few days passed and they never got back to me, so I said I'd ring them to see what the story was. They gave me a rough guess of shipping on the phone and then said the order would be delayed because of a UPS strike in canada. But that was fine, surely everything would be sorted and I'd have my parts before christmas, right?

Nope, after much emailing and phone calling later they said the orion stuff I had ordered wouldnt be ready till february....so again fine I replaced that with other manufacters. This dragged on till january when finally the order was (apparently) ready to ship and they took my details for payment. BUT the order might be delayed for a couple of days because they were moving to a different location (in the same town).

They then proceeded to disappear off the face of the planet. Not answering emails, not answering phone calls. This continued till late february, during which time I was continually checking my credit card wondering whether or not to cancel it.......Eventually they answered the phone (after about six weeks of calling), and told me ooops they should have it ready by the end of the week.

So, naturally, I cancelled that one. If anyone else has had any dealings with heavens and earth Id be interested to hear if my case was the exception or is this is the norm.....

Not to worry though, last weekend I ordered off hands on optics www.handsonoptics.com/ in the states. They turned the order around within a day and it should be wheeling its way across the atlantic right about now due to arrive some time next week.

Maybe finally, I can get something done.

Kieran

That's real bummer Kieran - hopefully your experience is a one-off.

Glad to see you're hopefully gonna get moving next week!

Good luck - let us know how you get on!

Dave McD

A major bummer,
theres nothing worse then been fobbed off when you call them.
If this is the norm, then they might have trouble with their suppliers

At least you perserveered Kieran, sometimes this happens, hopefully all will be ok from next week on, lets hope those clouds clear

Thanks for shouting out about this. Let us know how you get on....
Keith...

Hi Kieran,
Sorry to hear about the hassle,if it was Antares supplied mirrors you ordered from Heavens & Earth I can ring Sky Instruments for you in Canada and let them know what happened I'm sure they wont be too pleased,I can actually speak to the owner of the firm if required,their gear IS good as some of the guys who viewed through my Dob at Cosmos will testify,you can PM me if you like
Eugene

Hi Kieran,

Sorry to hear about the trouble you had. I'm just curious why you ordered your mirrors from Canada? Was it much cheaper than from some of the UK suppliers like oldham optical or galvoptics? Or was it that you were ordering something specific which the UK optics houses couldnt supply.

Just curious.