What's your experience with snooty HiFi salesmen?

@ghdprentice I understand the reaction of "moving on" if there is an attitude problem in a store. But given (a) the scarcity of audio stores and (b) the importance of hearing a system in person, many people don’t have the luxury of moving on, right? This does not justify the salesperson being snooty or rude, but they have leverage in the situation.

I live in Denver. I have found the folks here pretty friendly, open. That’s partly a Western state thing; friendly is expected a lot of the time. Still, if they weren’t, and I wanted to hear Devore or Wilson or Dynaudio or Acora or whatever, I would have to try to get a slightly tougher skin. Otherwise, I'd have to travel a long way to hear them. Beyond that, what do I do -- buy these speakers on the internet and pay $$$ for shipping to return them? That's not going to give me a lot of experience before buying. Hence, the leverage.

Soundings in Denver is one of the good ones. No pressure and very knowledgeable. Ask for Jess. 

Yes, and you don’t need to go to a store anymore because now they’re on-line in forums like this and on the phone! When that happens I won’t buy anything from them, and in some instances even the product they are selling from anyone. That’s why I will never buy a particular streamer, that I won’t mention here because I don’t want to offend the good audiophiles that enjoy that product. I also make it a point to continue to tell everyone I am in contact with and discuss audio about my experience and why I don’t recommend buying from this person. This is the only way you can make a difference in the attitude of some of these individuals. Your wallet! On the flip side, if they treat me right I treat them right in every way I can. I’m their their best advocate, product and person 😀

Sorry if this rant is a repeat!

In the metro Denver area, you will be hard pressed to find a quality Audio store. Yes there are stores that sell quality audio equipment, but their sales staff leaves a lot to be desired. From one store that only has an Xbox of a disk transport and the system that holds great promises& public admiration, can’t play a single note below 100 hz.. Yes something is wrong with that. then you turn to the oldest store (approx 45 yrs in the business) in the community where the sales person asks you that you currently use in hopes of providing something near equivalent to start with and then hooks you up to the most obnoxious pieces of flotsam and on top of that didn’t have ANY kind of disk transports and couldn't fine any sample music you bring in on ANY of his streaming sources. If you end up buying something ’IN SPITE OF’ your salesman’s attention to you, you should be rethinking you choice of stores. From now on I think I might have to travel at least as far as Ft Collins or possibly Albuquerque, as these idiots here don’t deserve to be in business and that totally takes away from the purpose of buying locally.

I will say there is one store (in the tech center) that I haven’t visited as when I was last searching for equipment, they were in the process of moving and didn’t have much of anything set up to show off.

Yes!  and I wouldn't go back either.  Same with snooty auto salespeople.  It is not that hard to spend your hard-earned money someplace else.