I was reading on skyandtelescope.org that orion and meade’s parent company (Optronic Technologies, Inc.) Has closed their offices and laid off all their staff in California. Has anyone else heard anything about this? Link to article below
About 15 years ago I bought a new 12" Meade telescope. I’m a weird type, I actually read instruction manuals. In the setup instructions it said something like after turning it on and selecting the 2-star alignment the scope would slew and I should center the brightest star in the finder. Most times there were no stars visible in the finder. I re read the instructions to verify I was doing it correctly, I was… I called Meade and eventually was told to send the scope back under the warranty which I did. This happened several times over about 4-5 years.
Finally after so many times (at least 5) sending it back and forth the guy I had spoken to many times admitted the instruction manual was incorrect. He told me how to correct the setup which I did and everything worked fine after that. Shipping back and forth must have cost Meade a pile of money.
The scope was very good, but eventually it became unwieldy and I needed help to set it up at any location other than my home ( I had a scope buggy for home). I donated it to a university physics department and replaced it with a 8" Meade.
I just saw this article myself and came here to post it. But Chris beat me to it!
I’ve never owned a Meade or Orion telesceope, but if this is accurate, this is a sad day for amatuer astronomy.
Its a very odd situation as i ordered a scope from them in may, it was backordered and they kept pushing the date back. Eventually they said it would be backordered until October on their site (i havent heard from them since mid june about my order) i find similar scope from gso and ordered it. Canceled my order with orion on sunday the 14th, still havent heard back from them so i called today and the customer service line goes to a full voicemail box so they have gone 100% dark it seems.
I hope you get your money back. Almost that exact same situation happened to me once. I never got a refund.