slooh.com Reviews 5

I'm not going to repeat what the other reviewers have said, except to say, they're spot on. I became a member in 2008, 3 years after they started. I took lots of images and didn't give it up until last year and it is staggering to see the difference, with the same telescope, on the same object, between then and now. All the stuff about Chile 3 that has never been used and the perpetual talk about Australia is also true. There was an Australia telescope for a while, but they discontinued it. They've always relied on a group of moderator/cheerleaders to police content to be SLOOH friendly. They are imitating America Online. Really. In the beginning it was exactly the same. Their moderator group were all very right wing, evangelical, little tin gods. That has morphed into their just being cheerleaders. I really think I could post a picture of a dog turd and that group would all respond with, "Nice catch!", and other fawning. They continue to pander to educators giving them a 1 year free account and constantly encouraging them to use it in their curriculum. So that they can get parents of the students to pay for an account. Aside from the comments about Paul Cox, I can add...HE'S CRAZY! He's the CTO. I had to file a police report on him once because he emailed me that he was going to be near me and "might just have to pay you a personal visit", as he had the delusion that I was stealing his identity. I have no idea what inspired that except that I was always speaking truth to power and the DO NOT like that. Bottom line, but a Seestar for $500 and you will get MUCH better images than you do from SLOOH. I have over 3000 astrophotos, some taken with big telescopes I own, some with the Seestar and some with SLOOH. When they're presented randomly in a picture frame slideshow, the Seestar and my person ones blow SLOOH away every time. The only thing they have that I don't is southern hemisphere images.
I can't believe that they haven't been prosecuted for fraud with the way that stuff is off-line for years and they never give refunds but take the subscription money anyway. Oh, and I've been banned for life. Not that I would want it again, but it just shows how the "SLOOH community" is more like a cult than an educational collaborative. Point taken about "not for kids". Would you give your kid a subscription to a cult for xmas?

I know this is long, but SLOOH really impacts thousands of impressionable school children and potential amateur astronomers and I want them to know that their experience with SLOOH is just dealing with another internet startup.

So, quick update about today at SLOOH- the latest posting date should be it- all telescopes on three continents have been offline for three weeks and all questions in the formum about it have been deleted.
People with one week trials have had no re-embursement, subscriptions have not been credited.
This is business as usual. Promise everything, deliver....whatever.

So, back to the eternal truths of SLOOH, equipment is very spotty. During the close Mars approach in 2020 their best planetary scope's red filter was missing, so all images were black and white. I'm not exaggerating, their answer? Wait 15 years and it'll probably be working. Not if I've found you in a dark alley first, Paul! What a load of wankers.

Now (2022), at opposition, it's Jupiter. Their filters were ruining every image and they just pulled them. Black and White Jupiter. I've never seen a hardware problem that they fixed inside two years. As of 5/2024 their main planetary 'scope, Canary 4 has worked about 10 days out of the last five years. The hardware was shot for about another five years until they took it out of service for maintenance. After two years it came back online and was really, really good...until they had "dome issues" and it went back offline for another year. Then everything was fixed and it was back...for 10 days. As of this writing it has been another two years with no updates. People have had entire year's memberships start and expire without it ever being online, no refunds offered, no apologies given, and the weekly SLOOH update has never mentioned it. "What's new at SLOOH?" Yeah, why would that mention hardware that everyone depends on that has been offline for years now. Canary 4, the main planetary 'scope worked well for 3 days, went offline again

So, just keep marketing. Celebrating the local total solar eclipse I was appalled how they could take a once in a lifetime miracle to observe and turn it into another slimy marketing promo. For the first hour of coverage they only talked about SLOOH programs like "quests" and then cut to incompetent, fawning schills. For children? Yeah, I want my kids' experience of a once in a lifetime event to be trashed by Paul Cox's marketing song and dance. That creature is lower than a snake's belly in a road rut.

My 5 1/2 " is producing better images of planets than SLOOH. THAT IS PITIFUL. Canary 3 never has visible planets in the drop-down choice box, just "Jovian Satellites". Chile 3 has never been online. That is just fraud. The image quality for most of their telescopes is much poorer than the hardware would indicate, because their CCD cameras are ancient. They constantly "upgrade" the software with stupid marketing ploys, like "Roll Call" and some gibberish they put on the loading page because it takes forever to load. Twice. "Focusing gravitational lenses. Altering gravitational constant". Be honest and at least add, "Spinning marketing BS". They advertise as an educational tool; how is that educational to spew gibberish to kids??? Laziest programmers around. A function like "download all my images"...impossible. THOUSANDS of scripts that will crash almost any phone. The woman that does some of the audio (Kochava Yerushalmit, I believe) has the most irritating fake Brit accent I've ever heard. They had a special event for the last major conjunction and were overwhelmed with traffic- thank to their adverts- that none of it was ever available. They've conditioned young users to become marketers. Hardly a post doesn't have an "!" in it or a cutesy title. Most forum posts are buried unless SLOOH marketers like it. Schills gush when an ignorant posts garbage from the SLOOH garbage hardware like it was real.
They are tagged as "trending" and "recommended". If one person likes it, it becomes "hot". The rest have to be manually selected to appear. And then every time you go back to the base forum screen they're gone again until you deliberately ask for them to be displayed.

The CFO is a former Safeway programmer and their head IT guy is a former airline programming project manager pretending he can program. Their only real programmer says his wish in life is to "shoot Muslims with dirty beards in the face". I'm not sure they're still there- what I'm telling you is based on 25 years of inside contact with them. I am a contractor, which is how I know what is going on. And they gave me a free account to use on development projects, so I know how it works. I know this is still the way it is.

Bottom line,it's cheap. Very cheap compared to remote telescope sites.That's the only way they survive.

They've decided that by marketing to teachers they can get lots of new subscriptions from unsuspecting students? Educational? Yeah, if you want to teach kids about unaccountable marketing ruining products. i really think this would turn kids off to astronomy. They've planted lots of reviews, from people that work for them and don't even try to hide it. My Meade CX90 3" gives better images than their $50,000 telescopes. That requires some pretty poor maintenance. Surprise. Their CEO's only tech experience was writing marketing software for Safeway. There's a lot of straight up false advertising as well. The Chile 3 telescope has been in the active telescope choices nightly for five years and has never been online once. They sell new features years before they're available. Australian telescopes? In the sign-up marketing for three years. No sign of them yet. They turn kids into little SLOOH influencers, encouraging them to put a "!" in every post title- to increase social engagement. Any post is marked "trending"; one like or response and it becomes "hot". Per the post about Jupiter, color is back...along with a washed out blob in the center of the planet. New software released constantly that just takes more resources and bugs, no features. The latest crashes constantly. Many features have never worked right when it comes to booking time. They're subscription Nazis. Logged in as a registered user? Access SLOOH from another computer on the same subnet- you, not a family member- and your session on the cellphone or whatever you were using is killed unceramoniously. So, only for the whole family if every member has their own account. Their "star parties" are anything but. "Keith and Jennifer" have to be the worst. Calling their exciting party, "Let's Be Done by 10"...where?...they constantly hide their last names. Why should I want to listen to astro advice from anonymous internet cowards? What are they hiding? And now you can only participate in them using Discord. The only way I've seen to actually cancel a membership is to register a payment CC that you know will soon expire (before your renewal date). No refunds. Cancel a year subscription a week into it for cause and you still pay for the whole year. You have to cancel long before the renewal date, but they don't tell you how long. They're so dodgy that PayPal won't take them as a client, so you have to give a company that is unable to write usable software your credit details. Lots of hype around things you can read on Wiki, marketed as SLOOH features. The "are we alone fields", simply spew known equations about life in the universe. The venture capitalist darling that started it says he was inspired by the death of his friend Blake Wallens in the WTC on 9/11. So he creates a toxic marketing tool to demonstrate why other cultures hate unrestrained venture capitalism???

Avoid this company!

The telescope quality on offer from Slooh is very poor, and as such, I cancelled my account last year. I have however just been billed again this year after my account was renewed without my consent, on contacting the company I was told they had no record of me cancelling and "as I was aware from their policies, we don't do refunds". I am now in contact with VISA to try and get my money back following the less than satisfactory response from customer services, who are now just ignoring my emails. On checking the status of my account now online it is still showing that a cancellation is in progress which it has said since I tried to cancel it last year.

Slooh offers shared access to remote telescopes, but it is not reccommended for astrophotography. Image quality is very poor and it is not possible to do real astrophotography with Slooh. The control you get over the telescope is also very limited. Either get your own gear or use iTelescope instead. Unfortunately, Slooh does not have a trial membership so you have to pay for a whole year to see how bad their service is...