Convincing your local dealer to let you try speakers at home

In addition to the damage issue, the loss of a demo model while a speaker is being used in a home trial, the main problem is that most customers cannot take a speaker home for  quick trial that is fair--it takes a lot of experience, experimentation, room treatment, etc., to make a speaker work right, so how can one do a meaningful in-home test over a day or two? 

One of my local dealers offers to do the setup at the customer's home.  I don't think there is a fee involved, at least for regular customers, unless the circumstances are extraordinary (he has travelled long distances and stayed over night to do some setups).  Even a quick setup of the speakers typically involves at least three hours of moving the speakers around and listening.  I know stuff that does not work out gets returned to the dealer, but, I don't know what is the financial arrangement.  This dealer does a lot of horse trading to make things work out for his customers--he takes trade-ins, including non-audio items that are truly weird--cars, big game rifles, vintage chess sets, watches, etc.

@hilde45 

My greatest concern with a home demo is perception.  You obviously really like these speakers and I submit that they would have to sound pretty bad in your space for you to return them.  As many have stated above, pick up late Saturday and return early Tuesday is not enough time to make a fair (to you) judgement. I would hope that the audition be at least a week. 

Lest we forget that old beast confirmation bias!

Warm Regards,

barts

@barts You make a good point.

Seen from a bit of a distance, it's a weird issue. TMR, Crutchfield, Audio Advisor, Upscale, and many others allow between 14 to 60 days to audition speakers. They all have the same problems a local dealer would -- concerns about damage, etc. They all can get a guarantee in writing with a credit card. And they do give a fair amount of time to audition. But you're right -- borrowing a speaker for 3 days? Hard to know how helpful that is. And these are $13k speakers. They really deserve a proper trial. 

Just to be clear -- I know what my options are. Talk to them. Ask them. Express my commitment to buying from them. Etc. It's the nature of these threads to solve the OP's problem over and over again. That's why I asked for people's stories about their own trials.  I do appreciate all the advice, that said.

Just relating my own experience:

For the most part I have tended to buy speakers second hand to try out, sell them if I don’t like them or tire of them.

However I have had a few in home auditions. One, long ago were Von Schweikert VR 4 Gen 2 speakers, which I ended up buying. The most recent in home audition was actually several years ago: My local Joseph Audio dealer let me do an in home audition of the Perspectives, which had impressed me in the store. I wanted to see if I was willing to pay the very high price for the Perspectives to replace my Thiel 3.7 speakers. If I liked the Perspectives more, I’d sell the Thiels to help buy the Perspectives. The dealer brought them to my home and helped set them up. I remember putting some payment on my credit card as deposit.

In the end I decided that while I loved the Perspectives, they didn’t convince me to get rid of my Thiel 3.7s. I thanked the dealer and told him that, while I had decided to keep my Thiels I also fell for the Perspectives enough that I wanted to buy them as well! Except, now I would have to save up for them. But I would come back to his store for the Perspectives when I could. Well...it look a long time to save for the Perspectives, through some financial ups and downs...years actually. But I finally saved up enough. During that time I passed up better prices on used Perspectives on Agon and other sites. Passed up buying at other dealers.

My dealer had earned my business by allowing me that home audition. So I was happy when I could finally purchase the Perspectives from his shop (he let me have a demo model for a decent price).

So, in the end, both of us were happy.

Also: as I detailed in my long Devore thread, I was also very interested in the Devore O/96 speakers, hearing them at a dealer a few times.  That's a speaker that, if buying new, I'd definitely want to hear in my home as they can be finicky and my room isn't very big.  The dealer offered in home auditions, but I felt I wasn't ready to commit to buying them given the Josephs were on my radar (and I wasn't selling my Thiels).  So I never did that home audition.