Teaching People to Dream
Looking for suppliers of galilean telescope kits and educational optical parts
A friend of mine is looking for suppliers of educational galilean telescope kits and optical parts such as lenses and prisms. IYA 2009 Galileoscope is not an option because it is likely to be available in late spring, too late for my friend's educational project.
The suppliers I am looking for may be in any country, provided they take orders from and ship to Italy. They should also provide good customer service and promptly answer inquiries or requests for more information.
We did find a few suppliers with interesting and affordable products, but they provide bad support. They have badly designed or broken web sites, demand minimum orders of at least 350$, accept only stone age payment methods with expensive processing fees, provide different product availability information depending on which country you call from, answer only part of the questions you ask via email, or simply don't answer email at all.
Doing an educational galilean telescope project is a nightmere, at least in Italy. Even getting plain lenses from the few local suppliers is difficult. Galileoscope would be the best option but getting it in, say, May, is useless because lessons end in June.
The suppliers I am looking for may be in any country, provided they take orders from and ship to Italy. They should also provide good customer service and promptly answer inquiries or requests for more information.
We did find a few suppliers with interesting and affordable products, but they provide bad support. They have badly designed or broken web sites, demand minimum orders of at least 350$, accept only stone age payment methods with expensive processing fees, provide different product availability information depending on which country you call from, answer only part of the questions you ask via email, or simply don't answer email at all.
Doing an educational galilean telescope project is a nightmere, at least in Italy. Even getting plain lenses from the few local suppliers is difficult. Galileoscope would be the best option but getting it in, say, May, is useless because lessons end in June.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Aaron Guzman on -
Science First (via starlab.com) has simple telescope assembly kits
http://www.sciencefirst.com/vw_prdct_mdl.asp?mdl_cd=6540000
The telescopes have the power and quality similar to Galileo's.
$65.95 for kits of 10.
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Permalink Reply by Paolo Amoroso on -
Thanks Aaron, but Science First is among the suppliers whose service leaves something to be desired. Another one is Telescope1609, which never answered an email inquiry.
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Permalink Reply by Kris McCall on -
Look up the Galileoscope. I don't have the link in front of me, but a very nice, self contained, kit telescope of excellent quality. Can't comment on customer service right now, but we will be ordering from them shortly for IYA.
Kris McCall
Sudekum Planetarium
Nashville, TN
hosting SEPA/WAC conference June 16-20, 2009
sepadomes.org
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Permalink Reply by Paolo Amoroso on
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Kris, Galileoscope would indeed be the best solution, but it will be available too late, most likely no earlier than mid May or so, for my friend's project (school term ends in early June). Instead, she will probably have a local company build custom plastic lenses and let kids put together them with tubes to make telescopes. It's a suboptimal kludge, but time is running really short.
I have direct Galileoscope customer service experience and heard some feedback from others. It looks like it's difficult to communicate with them because they apparently answer little email (e.g. none of the 3 emails we sent, I've tried with a fourth a couple of days ago). US customers may have better luck by phone.
I know that the project is run by volunteers. I do appreciate their work and dedication, but at times it would be really important to get some information from them. My friend and I placed an order for Galileoscope kits at a time when the site was overloaded and returned many errors. Although we did write to customer support, we are still not sure whether our order got through or we need to reissue it.
At times the Galileoscope site is unavailable for days. It would be easy for the team to put together alternate offsite communication channels for status updates on site availability, e.g. via Twitter, an external blog or Planetarium Network/DOME-L.
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Permalink Reply by Paolo Amoroso on
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I was finally able to get some information from AAS.
Only four people, all of whom volunteers, are working on Galileoscope. They have been overwhelmed by the positive worldwide response to the project and are trying to catch up with all problems. As for online ordering issues, it looks like some European credit cards are limited in their use in USA, and the volunteers are working with the credit card processor to better handle orders from Europe. An official status update should be coming soon.
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Permalink Reply by Paolo Amoroso on
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