Letter sent To Meade On January 11th, 2001
Still Hasn't been Answered!!!
On January 11th, 2001 I sent a Certified Letter to Meade Instruments Corp
explaining the problems with Meade DS-114AT.
In that letter I explained that due to the Poor Quality of this scope that all statements indicated on the box where impossible.. The Autostar Could Not "Locate" because of the amount of play in the mount.. 10 of 10 tests proved that the Autostar couldn't locate a single star without being off by a huge margin. Me being a true "Newbie" to Astronomy, I had a Local Astronomy Professor from a nearby Collage setup the scope and give it a try. After He setup up the scope and checked for collimation, he began to train the Autostar and set the home position, he too had a problem with the Backlash of Motors, and he began to Tweak the drive system with a Hex Key.. After 10 minutes of adjusting the Motors the Backlash wasn't as bad as before. he set the Autostar to Jupiter for the first test, Again The Autostar was off by 13 degrees and he manually had to adjust the scope position. After finding Jupiter and centering it, he removed his hand from the Scope and Jupiter was no longer in the view. That's the same problem I was having... he had to keep a steady hand on the scope to keep any object in view. He began to tell me that the Eyepieces that came with this Telescope are "Very Cheap" and recommended that they should be throw away.. He tried ALL 3 Eyepieces
that came with the scope and couldn't get any of them to show a good image, he inserted his own 1.25 Plossl 6.5 mm Eyepiece and was able to get a faded Picture of Saturn. After a 3 hours of testing he came to the decision that this telescope wasn't fit for anyone. He is a Meade owner and was shocked that Meade would actually put the DS-114AT into Production....
Anyway....
My letter was signed for at Meade a few days later, and I received Notification from the Post Office saying who signed for it and when..
In that Letter i gave my full address, 2 phone numbers (1 with Voice-mail) 2 E-mail Addresses.. I haven't heard from them since.. Now that's great Customer Support. To this date i have sent 2 letters, 3 faxes, 1- E-mail (to:engineer @meade.com) thats the only Published E-mail to Meade) and 6 Phone calls.. ALL HAVE BEEN DISREGARDED BY MEADE!!!
So Before I get Flooded with E-mail from people who read this, keep in mind that THIS REVIEW is for your Information and that of People who are considering buying the DS-114AT. I received over 110 E-mails to my review and some where in support of my review and some didn't agree with it. I received answers like "You didn't try better Eyepieces" and "You Don't know what your talking about" Yes I did try Better Eyepieces, but tha's not the point!! Meade packaged the Eyepieces with the Telescope and Said right on the box "Objects you can see" but it din't say with "better eyepieces.. And your right about me not knowing anything i am totally new at Astronomy but I did have a professional look at the scope and came to the same conclusion..
So..I light of Meade not caring enough about the DS-114AT, I have Written a letter to Wal-Mart and will CC: Many Meade Dealers that where found on Meades Web-Site and I will contact my State's officials who handle this type of matter.. Explaining my dissatisfaction from Meade Instruments and service..
Thank You.
Dave