My old, battered Swarovski ATS 65 HD scope has been refurbished by Swarovski in Austria and is almost as good as new. I sent it off via Swarovski's UK office in late January and got it back a couple of days ago. They cleaned it, renewed a couple of components, refilled it with nitrogen and shipped it back. They also renewed the worn off logos on each side of the barrel, which was a nice touch. The repair cost £134 including VAT and shipping, which was very good indeed.
It was secondhand when I bought it in 2014 so was overdue for a bit of a refit. I also bought a new 20-60x eyepiece as well, as the old one was full of fungus and not fit for purpose any more. The old one went into the recycling.
The view is sharper and clearer than before - not only due to cleaning and overhaul of the body but to the new eyepiece.
I was going to buy a brand-new scope but decided against it for a couple of reasons - it would be wasteful to just scrap this one if I could get it refurbished instead and, also, I couldn't afford to. New spotting scopes are very expensive.
As an aside, how can my repaired scope get from Austria to the UK in less than 24 hours (via UPS) while Royal Mail take several days to ship a book from within the UK, and which still hasn't turned up?
