CLEAN & OVERHAUL OF BINOCULARS AND TELESCOPES PRICE LIST 2008   THE BASIC PRICE Clean internal and external lense £20.00 Clean prisms and (with binoculars) realign £20.00 Postage to repairer £6.50 Postage back to you (mainland U.K. excluding Highlands) £6.50 Net. £53.00 VAT £9.28 TOTAL £62.28   DISCOUNTS - for non-prismatic binoculars (eg early 'field glasses' and opera glasses) or for non-prismatic telescopes there is no "clean prisms" or "realign" charge, deduct £23.50. - if the posting weight is under 2Kg. postage is £4.50 each way instead of £6.50, deduct £4.70. - if you collect the item from us, deduct £7.64 postage (or £4.70 if the posting weight is under 2Kg.)   MORE DIFFICULT JOBS (these prices inclusive of VAT) Large (60mm+) wartime binoculars, add   £25.00 (can be very difficult to work with and take a lot of time to repair) Items with internal filter mechanisms, add £25.00 Expensive roof prism binoculars (typically, those that retail for over £500.00), add   £25.00 Lenses and prisms are often made out of several parts (elements) cemented together. Sometimes age and damp cause them to separate (it looks as if there's condensation inside, it sometimes looks like 'stars'), add per lens or prism, add   £20.00 Re-gassing (many binoculars are nitrogen-filled but the nitrogen always leaks out over time), add £23.50 PAYMENT + TIME No payment is due until the job is complete, you will be sent an invoice...unless the cost of the repair exceeds the resale value of the repaired binocular in which case you must pay in advance. A repair usually takes 3 to 5 weeks but this is not consistent, the repairer always quotes 2 to 3 weeks, sometimes he takes 1 week, sometimes I'm still waiting after 6 weeks. REPLACING PARTS, REPAIRING DAMAGE Charges for all of the above jobs assume that nothing is broken.  Parts are sometimes available for common models that are in the shops now; parts are rarely available for older binoculars (e.g. five or six years old); parts are never available for old (e.g. wartime) items.  Parts for some expensive makes (e.g. Zeiss, Leica) are only available from the manufacturers, who will also insist on carrying out the Clean & Overhaul. Slight chips, crazing, cracks or any other damage can look very minor when viewed through a layer of dust and grime but once cleaned any damage will be glaringly and horribly obvious.  This includes a very fine (and usually very minor) 'pitting' that occurs in some old items and which cannot be 'cleaned off'.  Similarly, filters and sighting graticules are prone to becoming grubby and cannot be cleaned (most customers prefer to have grubby sighting graticules removed altogether). HOW WELL WILL THE ITEM 'CLEAN UP'? It is never possible to tell just how well an item will clean up.  Sometimes an item that is so grubby that it is complete unusable will end up 'as new'.  Sometimes an item with slight dust and a couple of black dots will emerge dust-free but with the same annoying black dots. Sometimes a very fine chip on a prism or scratch inside a lens becomes obvious, whereas before it couldn't be seen because of the dust.  I can assure you that the repairer will do the best job that is possible, but I can never promise that an item will be restored to perfect condition. SOME BINOCULARS CANNOT BE REPAIRED Some binoculars are of modular design, or have the prisms cemented in so that they cannot be adjusted.  These include old French prismatic binoculars, Steiner and Avimo. Zoom binoculars have complicated mechanisms that take a long time to repair and fall apart in the process, the optics are very poor compared to non-zoom binoculars, they are not worth repairing.  It makes no difference if you originally paid hundreds of pounds, they cannot be repaired.  ESTIMATES If I think the job will cost more than the basic price I will send a written estimate.  This may cause delay while I write to you with the estimate and you write back to accept, but that is better than getting a bill for more than you expect. IF YOU DON'T PAY... When the job is complete we will send you an invoice and payment is due within 30 Days.  At the end of that 30 days we will send a final reminder giving notice that you have another 30 days to pay, after which we will (without further notice) sell the item to recover the invoice amount. We will then owe you the difference (if any) between the amount we sold the item for and the invoice amount. The reason for being so strict is not that we want to sell your item (which involves a huge amount work), it is because we don't want to sell your item, we want you to pay for the repair! IF YOU DON'T COLLECT (from our stand at an antiques fair).... If you arrange to collect a job at a fair and can't make it, please telephone before the fair to let us know so that we don't waste valuable space carrying it.  The  office number is 01923 220206.  If you are  unavoidably delayed on the day of a fair you can contact me on 07976 831953, if we are too busy to answer you must leave a message. There is a storage charge of £2.00 per Kg. per month for uncollected goods if you don't turn up and don't contact us to make alternative arrangements. This is because space is valuable and we need it to carry stock not uncollected repairs.