365Astronomy Ltd Reviews 

Reply from 365Astronomy Ltd

Feb 13, 2022

Thanks for being a good customer!

Reply from 365Astronomy Ltd

Feb 13, 2022

We sent a few emails and suggested a solution, plus we asked to call us for further help, but it seems our emails were not getting through. We are also one of those few astronomy retailers that would normally pick up the phone, so please don't be afraid to call us and we will try to make your telescope to work.

Reply from 365Astronomy Ltd

Jan 21, 2021

I wish we could serve you better with your order, but I'm sure I won't be sharing anything new if I said that 2020 was an exceptionally difficult year for many people and we were not spared. We should say that we were fortunate enough to have to work harder than ever to fulfil the never ending flood of orders and answer a myriad of inquiries, telephone calls, text messages, WhatsApp messages etc. For me it is better to work too hard than not work at all, but this year we ended up with a situation when we had to think really hard how to manage it. No satisfaction, just survival... I personally had not a single day off since my daughter was born in October 2019 and I had around 8h working days as exception only around holidays and sometimes at weekends, otherwise a 14-16h working day was more common with occasional 18h working days. Having colleagues doesn't mean I can work less as unfortunately they have to work most of the time from home and there are tasks that only my wife or I can perform as we are a home based family business...

The effect of Covid-19 and the repeated lockdowns in the UK and most other countries created a huge number of new amateur astronomers as it seems this is the only hobby that you can do from your back garden (once you've had enough of gardening).

This is/was great news for astronomy, but when it is combined with lowered levels of factory capacities due to the same reason (covid-19), then you have a kind of a difficult situation, possibly an administrative disaster... now add Brexit...

Our system worked fine before the effects of the above kicked in, but the huge delays with product supplies combined with the large number of products on our website and the extremely large number of inquiries and increased number of orders meant that we ended up with a very tricky situation. Oh, and as we have a baby, whom we could mostly not take to any social activities we had to think hard how to resolve this life/work balance thing whilst keeping sane and without falling of the chair due to over exhaustion.

Then there came a really big surprise around October 2020 when our supplier of Celestron and Baader products announced that they will cease business in December 2020. This affected over 1200 products and three/four months later we still don't see a satisfying solution...

For the above reasons and to make it manageable we had to remove over thousand products from our website and stop most international shipping, but we are still struggling with not being able to find enough time to get back to our customers in time about their inquiries.

Otherwise we are working on a new system which will include a ticketing system that we hope will help with faster response times and to make sure that we don't miss out on some important customer inquiries... then hopefully customers won't have to call us a "cowboy outfit"...
Hopefully the above info shows well enough the level of difficulties we were/are going through due to the covid-19 situation and now the not exactly brilliant Brexit agreement doesn't help to make it any lighter.
I should point out that as UK distributor for several brands we communicate a lot with our dealers and our situation is not unique, our whole industry suffers in a very similar way (except probably the baby...)
All the best and keep safe and healthy!
Zoltan T., owner, 365Astronomy

Reply from 365Astronomy Ltd

Updated Jan 22, 2021

It is always sad to receive a 1-star review, but especially now when we feel we work out our hearts and give more than humanely possible to our customers due to the extremely increased load since the lockdown.
We were notified by via a Paypal case that you tried contacting us via Facebook, which we explained that we do not use for communication, only to advise customers about product news. There are too many ways of communication these days... (text messages, Messenger, WhatsApp, email, message via our website, Skype, Viber etc, we simply cannot check all of these constantly, so we use text, email, whatsapp mainly). Also, we've had a popup window on our website advising customer about the current situation and that there might be some delays due to Covid-19 and the fact that since the lockdown we receive about 10 times more phone calls, 4-5 times more inquiries and 3-4 times more orders than before and it's very difficult to cope with such a load. It seems as if the whole world turned to Astronomy due to the lockdown... At the time of your order both items were unavailable, although unfortunately our website was showing available stock. Since the lockdown we have experienced difficulties with keeping the stock info up to date due to the number of inquiries and the rapidly changing stock levels. We sent the Baader product as soon as we received it and we refunded the other item as per your request and at that point it seemed that you were happy with the situation. However I realised now that the packet still didn't arrive to you after a month. We've received lots of complaints from US and other international (and even UK) customers about huge delays with postal services due to the Covid-19 situation. The tracking info shows that it is slowly moving through the USPS network, so hopefully it'll be with you shortly.... Unfortunately we have no control over this and all we can ask is to be patient and wait for the goods to arrive. Thanks for your understanding. Zoltan, owner, 365Astronomyto the number of inquiries and the rapidly changing stock levels. We sent the Baader product as soon as we received it and we refunded the other item as per your request and at that point it seemed that you were happy with the situation. However I realise that the packet still didn't arrive to you after a month. We've received lots of complaints from US and other international (and even UK) customers about huge delays with postal services due to the Covid-19 situation. The tracking info was showing that it was slowly moving through the USPS network, so hopefully it'll be with you shortly.... Unfortunately we have no control over this and all we can ask is to be patient and wait for the goods to arrive.

UPDATE: I've checked it and I can see now that your order was delivered a day later after you posted your 1-star review. (It seems we had to take the blame, at least partially for the slow USPS service...)

UPDATE #2: Thanks for adjusting it into a 3-star review ;o) Zoltan