Welcome to West Coast Astro!
Pardon our dust as we continue building our website.
**Scroll down for important message regarding Amazon, and our Solar Finder Product.
Regarding Amazon:
Amazon refunded all customers sales of our Solar Finder 4/5-4/6 with funds from our account with no warning to us. We are working with our representative at Amazon at this time to resolve this issue however we want to ensure that our customers have no worries regarding the usage of our Solar Finder product.
Our Solar Finder is based on the same principles as all “Pin-Hole” Solar Devices. This allows a very tiny amount of the suns light to be presented on the white screen on the solar finder which allows you to safely align your telescope.
Amazon feels that since we are not a company who is listed on the “American Astronomical Society’s” list of sale suppliers, that we have an unsafe product.
The true story is, Amazon approved our product for sale, let us sell the product, while giving them 30% of the sales, and then changed the rules with no warning to anyone selling Solar products. So they then refunded all customers out of the businesses selling accounts, meaning our product was given away for free, leaving us at a complete loss.
We have since learned that Amazon did the same thing to businesses back in 2017, which we were not aware of until now, as we are a new company and were not selling products back then.
We simply operated our business on Amazon following all rules that we were provided, and even had our product listed reviewed and approved by Amazon prior to selling our product.
We will continue to work with Amazon to get the money we deserve back, however the key thing we want all of our customers to know is that our product is safe, and you can use the product with no worries.
If you are still concerned, please refer to the following articles which walk you through how to even make a pin hole device, and how they are safe to use:
NASA JPL, “Student Project: How to make a Pin Hole Camera”
National Geographic: “Make a Pinhole Camera”
Temple University: Pinhole Camera Project
NASA: “How to make a Pinhole Camera”
National Eye Institute: “How to watch an eclipse safely”
Due to all of this nonsense, we are actively reviewing our options to migrate our business away from Amazon, so please continue to check our website for a complete list of all of our products and we will have links to where you can purchase our items.
Again, sorry for the uneeded confusion Amazon has caused.
And to all viewing the Solar Eclipse Monday,
Clear Skies!!!