Would you pay to audition speakers

I wonder what this dealer's policy is with past customers who made reasonably sized purchases. There is one local dealer who was guarded until I bought a couple things and now they are very open to auditions. My position is that unless a dealer invites me, I don't ask to audition unless I have genuine intentions of buying that specific item from them in the near future.

Yes, some people do use dealers to demo, then buy used cheaper. BIG DEAL. I'll gladly pay MORE to someone else than the dealer is charging, before I give 5.00 away, let alone 500.00 The 500.00 is no guarantee you'll like the speakers. This is not nor ever will be a good practice. Does a dealer ever guarantee speakers? New if something goes wrong? No, you only get a warantee.

Taters, I was sounding off before carefully reading your post.

I guess this dealer is so busy tallying their sales slips in these robust economic times that they don't have time for mere "shoppers". If they were working at the shoe counter at Nordstroms and you wanted to try every pair "for fun", on a Saturday, I could see where you could be stretching their Customer First policy. But this dealer must be selling big buck boxes if they think $500 is an appropriate ante to get in their door, and I would think they would be kissing your rear to even darken the entrance these days.

I might be a chronic tire kicker and so perhaps a target for this kind of "really great service", but I continue to buy gear in brick and mortar shops. Since I travel a fair bit, I also go to stores in different towns that carry equipment I don't have access to hear in my home town, or even combination's of gear I have not heard together before. I always state whether or not I am actually in the market to buy something. Sometimes I am, sometimes not. I value the shopkeepers opinions since they usually know much more than me and are enthusiastic about their products and my interest. But I do not value their insights to the tune of 5 "C" notes.

Adding to what Theo said, I would want that model to be handing me $50 glasses of wine with my demo. Maybe if I drank enough I would actually buy something from them...

Quite a few years ago I was looking for some video gear and entered a high end video/audio retailer here in NYC to see what they had. The owner informed me it was a $50 fee (good towards any purchases) to demo.

I didn't go ahead with it, since most or all of the gear would have been out of my price range at the time. But especially on video gear, I could see so many people getting his recommendation, then buying mail order. I think now I would gladly pay $50 for guidance through a complex purchase, and to be able to see state of the art gear.

That being said I have recently made my foray into being a dealer for a select few pieces of gear. Luckily this is not my main source of income, so I suspect that I will be dealing with many of the challenges outlined here retailers face.

it might be worth it to pay for an audition in your stereo system, to avoid a serious mistake. the cost of an audition may be less than the loss accruing from resale of an expensive component.