Fee for home audition

@ghasley Always the voice of reason and a cultivator of relationship and trust vs. the shallow transactional view of an ART obsession we chase in the service of music reproduction.

I amassed 12 phono stages …at home for a week long trial….. thru relationship…

PM me the dealer Kind Sir, most likely somebody i can relate to…..

Peace

Jim

Ghasley +1 agree, excellent post . Iam only hoping that audio dealers carefully treat new costumers with respect , true relationship is very important especially on this hobby. Iam also greatful that there so much options online now to compete with unfriendly audio local stores.

It requires a big investment to be a good high end dealer but some of them don't want to have demo product. I would love to carry a box to your car and cash a $5000 check too. If that's your dealer you can do better especially if you are willing to pay retail prices.

@ghasley

It was good to see someone with actual dealer/customer experience share their observations related to the dealer in question. The more important comments for the OP would have been not such much an invitation to "pile on this dealer", but rather, ask the question: "Does his policies work for you?" If not, choose another dealer. Or: "Why didn’t we connect?"

As I read thru the early posts, and being an retired dealer, I came up with several scenarios/explainations of my own.

1) the guy IS a jerk. A later post by gasley easily disqualified this option.

2) he’s a hardened and caloused audio dealer, who’s had his fill of being jerked around, and simply taking the position that "enough is enough!" Maybe?

3) he’s reached a "good place" in his audio career and spends the bulk of his time supporting the customers who kept the letters in his sign burning out front for decades. He has already arrived at a point where closing a sale RIGHT NOW is no longer a strong motivator. Instead of a whack-a-mole business philosophy he has learned where to best position valuable resources, including himself, and acts accordingly. Being a "good steward of his customer’s money" is high on his list of priorities. His customers are perfectly okay with him making money -- they want him to stick around for a while. Some may actually understand the element of "fair exchange" and maybe even send him an annual "Thank You" card.

Tales from the Dungeon of Customer/Dealer Exchanges

Customer 1:

A customer visits the store and shows an interest in upgrading a current component. After a nice demo and quality time spent, the customer expresses an interest in the item. The dealer offers to allow him to take it for a home demo. After the home demo, customer reports back later with unit in hand and says he wants to purchase it. One problem, though; he has to get rid of his curernt piece first. The dealer does not do trade-ins (at the time), but later checks a card file and finds someone who might be interested. He makes a call to the prospect, puts the deal together and accepts the cash on behalf of the other customer. The new customer is notified of the good news, drops in to pick up the cash, and tells the dealer "he will be in Friday after he gets paid to pick it up." Friday passes. No customer. Then, the next Friday, and the next. A few weeks later a familiar customer drops in who happens to be acquainted with the other customer. When asked what was going on, he replied: "Oh, he got a better deal online and didn’t have to pay sales tax."

Customer 2:

Customer calls all frantic. It’s the week of Christmas, they just bought something at a Big Box store and want us to install it for them BEFORE Christmas. We explain that we’re booked solid and can’t accomodate. They scream at us and say they’ll never do business with us again!!

Customer 3:

Custom enters the store and asks if we can dispose of an item for them. They knew we had a means to handle this. They explain that they just bought a new one at a competitor and didn’t have a way to dispose of the old one. Since they have done some business with us before, we didn’t want to piss them off, so we agreed to accommodate. A few minutes later, they walk back inside and explain that the item was too big and bulky to handle themselves and asked if we could give them a hand. We did. Haven’t seen them since.