Restocking Fees, 30-Day Free Trials

It's all about relationships.  I have two B&M dealers and one on-line dealer.  The on-line dealer offers no in home trials or returns.  I also get 15% to 20% of retail from him.  Both B&M dealers will let me do in home trials with anything in the store even unopened box inventory.  Neither one would charge me a restocking fee if I returned gear based on my dissatisfaction.  Of course, I give all three a ton of business so I am a known quantity.  My guess is that I would have to pay a restocking fee if  I walked into a new place with no buying history. 

"Audiophile" dealers don't care about promoting their businesses beyond whatever customers they currently have. The only ones left rely on the 'phile community and have seemingly zero interest in expanding by promotion of any kind I can see, or reaching out to any of the great unwashed by maybe promoting house concerts or even meet and greet in-store events (Goodwin's has no email list…they recommend checking their site for news of whatever). They seem to not care about actual music, they often have either (paradoxically) smug or unsophisticated sales people, and although online prices are generally always cheaper, they seem to not be interested in discounting new gear…and they wonder why people buy online.

Wolf-garcia - you should check out Audio Video Therapy in Nashua, NH.  The exact opposite of Goodwins.  

Good luck with that it will never be fair find a great dealer and borrow a demo unit.

I've been to AV Therapy (recently) and yeah…they're pretty cool, and do support music here and there…they provide a little discount, no tax, etc. They have a LOT of stuff crammed into that place. I like it.