As far as equatorial mounts go that price is FAR from the cost of a precision mount. They cost many thousands of dollars and that's without a scope.

Setting circles for your mount are worthless. They are just decoration. It's always been that way. Even the 6" circles on my Astrola mount bought in the 50's for what in today's dollars would be about $2500 had useless circles as they had no vernier scale which is needed to use them with any accuracy.

Since the right angle sweep is more accurate than 6" circles WITH a vernier scale the circles are pretty useless and really just window dressing. Even if they appeared to read right they'd be too far off to be of any use. They are also much slower to use. Consider them decoration. You can get electronic circles for most mounts. The generic ones need a bit of work to adapt to a particular mount. They will be fairly accurate, far more accurate than mechanical circles of the size on your scope would be. But mounts in your price range don't have the precision alignment of the axes and bearings to make them as accurate as you'd likely expect. Using the circles as being relative so you only are measuring a few degrees from one location to another, you can get the needed accuracy but the errors of such mounts when you are using them over 360 degrees these errors really add up making them worthless as others have said.

It turns out optical accuracy is far cheaper to achieve than is mechanical accuracy.

Your experience is one reason I always suggest our new club members hold off buying a scope until they've attended several star parties and seen and handled many different scopes. Then you start to realize the compromises involved when you shoe horn a scope into a price range that's affordable. Actually today you get one heck of a lot more for your buck than you did when I started back in the early 50's. Then the only way to afford a scope over 60mm was to make it yourself and even then it could cost $100. I bought gas back then for 19 cents a gallon! In gas money that very simple scope cost me $1800 today! And it had no setting circles, was as unsteady as a Don Knotts character with a 30 degree field of view (most scopes were more like 20 degrees back then). My current imaging telescope and mount couldn't be bought at any price under 6 figures and that was in those 1950's dollars.

So to most of us that setting circle "problem" is a so what type issue. It's been that way for the more than 50 years I've been in the hobby when dealing with mounts in that price range. Remember too that the RA circle works in sidereal time and is not driven. Thus you need to reset it to the correct sidereal time each time you move to another object trying to use the circles. A major pain at best. Another reason few ever tried to use them. Of the hundreds of members in our club over the last 48 years I only know of one who ever even succeeded in using the circles that came with his 8" scope. It cost in 1960 dollars about $2000 and did have a vernier dial. He had a watch modified to sidereal time and did use them. Of course he found 3 objects a night while the rest of us using right angle sweep found dozens but he made them work. I only fault Celestron and all other manufacturers of mounts and scopes in that price range for even putting setting circles on the mount knowing they are worthless window dressing.

Rick