Fee for home audition

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.

@ghasley your contribution to Grimm thread is vary valuable and I certainly believe you. I am not sure you know the dealer. I did not reveal any info on the dealer as I did not want a single interaction with one customer to damage his business. He has been in business for a few years and I do not think he would still be operating if he was a bad dealer. For whatever reason, he decided to charge me for a home demo. I have moved on and so all good. 

The purpose my thread was to get information regarding home audition. I accomplished that with the help of amazing audiogoners! I just got the Grimm today for home audition today form a very friendly dealer. I will set up everything later tonight and evaluate the new addition to my system. Hopefully it will sound as amazing as it was described and I will end up purchasing the streamer. 
 

Once gain thanks to everyone who contributed!

Seems like a lot of whining going on by dealers here. Learn how to adapt and use your inherent competitive advantage to your advantage and let potential customers demo a piece at home on a day when your store is closed  Let a new customer know after they demo a component that you will compete with other offers they may see and discuss the advantages of buying from you versus buying online. Adopt manufacturers who either don’t sell online or disallow internet sales where there are local dealers. Offer to help set up a component in their system or help set up their whole new system. You have a considerable competitive advantage here, you just have to creatively think about how you can leverage it rather than just feeling like victims. The days are gone when you can just demo something in the store and have the customer walk out the door with it while you count your $$$. Adapt or die. It’s as simple as that. There are lots of people here who are loyal to their local dealers precisely because they offer services that go over and above what any online retailer can deliver. If you’re not prepared to provide that level of service to earn business and rather just charge your prospective clients egregious fees just for people to hear stuff, I wish you luck.