Charging A Fee To Demo An Amplifier In A Brick & Mortar Store

I don’t have a ’dog in the fight’ here, but I surely understand why this is done.

Back in the day, when you asked for a sales rep’s time, there was a ’gentleman’s agreement’ that you’d buy from them if the item is what you wanted. Perhaps the explosion of online buying coupled with an entitlement mentality and degradation of what others are worth causes many of us to forget that.
Case Study: Years ago (Circa 1990’s) a friend of mine discovered a little store in Northern NJ that specialized in GPS hardware and software. "Come check this place out!" he said. "They have a great selection, the staff is really knowledgeable and they’re great with service when you have questions."
About six months later, he was in the market for a new Garmin, and he went to the store, burned a lot of their time, and bought from the local catalog warehouse because the price was cheaper. Some time after that he was ready to upgrade again, went to the store, and was astounded to discover they went out of business. Go figure.

If you don’t want to pay for professionalism, be prepared to get what you pay for. Everybody wants good service and knowledgeable, professional salespeople, but that costs money. You don’t work for free, and they shouldn’t either.
"If I was a serious buyer I’d feel offended but there are so many tire kickers who have no intention of buying. If a reasonable fee was posted for like a 30 minute demo there is equipment I wouldn’t mind paying to hear. I don’t think it’s fair to take someone’s time if I know I’m not buying.

THIS.
I'm not saying I agree with his policy, but I completely understand the reasons for it.

Is there no really good customer service anymore?  The place that I buy from always gladly offers to put you in a listing room and ask if you want them to stick around for any help or questions if not they says take your time and if you need anything just let me know.

If I was asked to pay for a demo I would walk out faster than I came in but thats just me.

DEALER: How about $500 for an amp demo?

ME: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_8M8EI3M1E

What’s the big deal?
Rare book dealers used to have "back rooms." The farther back, the pricier the books. Supposedly, one famous dealer in London had FIVE back rooms--and in the fifth was a Gutenberg Bible. To "earn" your way back to see the more expensive books you had to demonstrate that you had the wherewithal to buy them. If you never bought any books in the first room, you wouldn’t be invited into the second, and so on.

In other words, only CUSTOMERS were invited to see the good stuff.

Similarly, when I tried to test drive a Honda S2000 back when they were new, the dealer declined to let me. Reason? He was getting inundated with requests for test drives with very few buyers. Why let yahoos put miles on your sports car when it’s just going to be a problem for whomever does buy the thing?

Plus, I didn’t have the money for a Honda S2000 and the dealer probably knew that. I was just a car buff who wanted to try the thing out.

Sounds to me like the OP had simply not qualified himself as a potential buyer of $17k amps. I'll bet if he had already bought a few choice items from that dealer, the dealer wouldn't have blinked at his request to demo the amps.

"Move along, nothing to see here!"

That dealers is a real turkey baste him.