What's your experience with snooty HiFi salesmen?

I live in a big city and three out of the four places are just horrible, incompetent sales people mainly. One charges for his 'advice' and claims his advice is on the order of a Medical Doctor. Yeah, right. The other won't let you listen to any music but what he puts on.

At the last place I was very clear I needed a turntable with an attached dust cover. The salesman then trashed every table he had except for the one that did not have an attached dust cover. Crazy - I mean I told him exactly what I was looking for and he ignored what I said. Lost a 4K sale. Another time the same guy spaced some well-known $12K speakers too far apart, making them sound really bad, when I asked him to place them a bit closer, he refused saying I didn't known what I was talking about. Later he calls me up and says his manager agreed with me and moved the speakers closer together and to come back in. I never did. I have other stories, but will end it with that one. Most audio stores could do twice the business if they knew how to sell - or even just listen! 

Lol it is always a good idea not to say much in a hi-fi  store and listen  to what they don't know. Then never forget that almost all the customers  have a much higher net worth than the salesman  do. If they get to bad don't be afraid  to let them come to that judgement many times I think there jealousy shows in there apparent arrogance. 

Back in the early 2000s, I was an IT contractor for BellSouth.  A group of us (all contractors) would often go to lunch together and sometimes visit various "interesting" stores while out and about.  One day, we went by an audio boutique North of Atlanta, up I-85.  About four of us went in and we were looking around.  One of the other contractors was looking for a set of speakers for his setup and really liked the look of the Thiels on display.  Only problem was, none of the salespeople would even bother talking to any of us.  Between the four of us, there was probably close to $2,000,000 per annum combined income, but we couldn't get any assistance to demo a pair of speakers.

That store no longer exists.  No wonder.

I've given up on the dealers in my town since I've had some bad experiences. The most recent was a few days ago. From now on I'll probably buy from other dealers online who are more copacetic. 

The market today is very different to when I started this obsession as a destitute, married undergraduate in the early 1970's. The larger retailers sold almost nothing like hifi, some factory warehouse outlets had started but basically sold cheap rubbish. Then the UK got stores like Superfi. Many lunch times spent there as a student. Staff were quite well informed and genuinely interested, hi fi mags were rather bookish and for enthusiasts. As the marketing and literature got more market orientated the consumers got more knowledgable. The great hifi store scene on "Not The Nine O'clock News" was actually not untypical. As engineering students, oddly with a design professor who had been an audio designer and a hifi freak, we had design assignments for linear tone arms, direct drive turntables, transmission line cabinets and all manner of hifi things. Of course we now knew rather more than most hifi salesmen.  The hifi enthusiast opening his (always his I'm afraid) own store was now a rarity, a member of staff who sold radios and tv's last week  was now trying to sell hifi. It still happens.I remember meeting a barman of my acquaintance working in a hifi store, I was looking for a turnable.  He pointed to a Garrard 401 with SME arm and said, "best in the world, direct drive". I said isn't it an idler drive", "yes the little rubber wheel drives directly onto the turntable" he replied.  Only recently in a multi chain national supposed specialist store I enquired about an amplifiers power output and he went onto the internet and I was told with disdain, "40 watts", I asked into 4 or 8 ohms, "what's the difference", was his reply even more disdainfully.