--- Maureen Ellis <me2 at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> Mike,
> Some of us have had very negative experiences with
> Close. I found him to
> be not only opinionated, but also very chauvinistic
> and dishonest.
<snip>
> not have the money at the time), and that I only
> wanted to have my trusty,
> but modest, 7 x 35's repaired, he did 'repair' them
> and charged me $50.
> Within 3 days, my 'repaired' binoculars went out of
> alignment again with
> just normal use and care. I did some asking around,

An interesting report, but I'd want more information
before accepting that he was being "dishonest." A.
Did you give him a chance to make good the repair?
B. Were the bins eventually repaired succesfully by
someone else?

If "yes" to A, then that does seem pretty bad. If
"no" to A and "yes" to B, then at worst I'd accept
that this was a case of incompetence. ("Never ascribe
to malice what can be explained by stupidity." I
don't know who first said that, but it's a pretty good
corrollary to the Golden Rule.) If "no" to B, then
it's not clear that they COULD be repaired.

> and others told me of
> similar experiences with this shop, If you have a
> generous budget to BUY
> a very good pair of binocs, Close may give you a
> deal. Be careful of
> having anything repaired there.

Ironicly, I noticed last night that the rubber
cladding
is peeling up a little on one side of the focus wheel
on the bins I just bought, so that it grinds a bit
against the barrel and makes the action rough. I
don't know how I failed to notice this when I was
testing them at the shop. I will call Close this
afternoon and ask if he can get a new focus wheel or
fix this.

This is starting to feel like excessive topic drift,
so my apologies if this is beyond the scope of
Tweeters.



=====
Mike Wagenbach wagen13 at yahoo.com
wagenATuDOTwashingtonDOTedu Seattle WA

The problem with expert advice is that it so often conflicts with one's plans.
-author unkown
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