With the costs associated with having a repair shop I doubt its economically feasible to repair any scope that costs them less than a certain amount to produce. They know what that number is.
Better for them to just send you a new model with or with a credit to upgrade. It may not make 100% of their customers happy but the largest percentage of them are going to be happy with getting a new model as a replacement or a cheap upgrade.
I would guess that custom shop started to cost them too much to make any benefit they got from it to warrant keeping it going.
I think the custom shop cost them sales of new scopes. When you could buy a used model, send it to the custom shop for new features and still be well under the cost of the new model it’s a hard sell to the bean counters to keep that service available.
I can walk on water.......................but I do stagger a bit on alcohol.
