Am I asking too much?

wtf? So the only service provided by the local dealer is to order the cartridge that I can get cheaper on-line and then refer me to someone else to provide actual service. Anybody else have a reaction to this?

Dealers like this unwilling to provide even the most basic customer service deserve to go out of business. Get the MoFi Geo-Disk and do it yourself. Find the same Koetsu on-line and save a couple grand. Develop the skills, feel the pride of accomplishment, and know you’ve done your part to drive incompetent uncaring entitlement minded waste of space empty suits out of business.

I mean seriously, Costco offers better service when you buy a range. Shouldn’t be surprised but I am. Pathetic. Sad fact of the matter is they will keep doing this as long as audiophiles play the pledge in Animal House Thank you sir may I have another! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIZoVO8ZyyQ

Don’t be Kevin Bacon. Don’t feel the least bit guilty and when you find that $7k Koetsu for $5k go back and gloat and tell them how they could’ve had an easy $2k if only they weren’t such effing A-holes. (May- or may not- want to tone down the language, entirely your call.)

(Don't anyone think for one second they are anything other than exactly like Nedermeyer, grinning and getting a thrill the whole time they know they are screwing you. They KNOW they are screwing you! No one can rip another person off like this, day after day, make it their actual business model, and not have total contempt for you as a customer. Its inevitable. Cognitive dissonance. They are screwing you. They know they are screwing you. They know its wrong to screw good people. Therefore you must be beneath them, which makes it okay to screw you. Not saying anything everyone doesn't know. Just saying what others are too polite or scared to say. They are Nedermeyer. Their customers are pledges. You subject yourself to the hazing, prove your total lack of self-respect, you get to join the fraternity of overcharged do me in the rear don't bother with the lube. That's just the way it works.)

@millercarbon -  lol, love the passion! I set up my current cartridge with a borrowed Dr. Feichert, but that was a$450 Hana EL - much lower stakes.  Happy to do it again, but do believe a local dealer would want to nurture a relationship.  

Dream on! Here in Seattle the only relationship they have time for is the one between you and their credit card reader. Sounds like the same where you are, at least with this one.

The stakes are no different. They all respond to the same alignment and tweaking. They all have stylus guards. Koetsu are slightly different but not because of price but because they don't color code the pins. I guess they assume since its not entry level you must know what you're doing. Also they aren't threaded, and don't provide any hardware, so you need to visit a local shop and ask for a few nuts and bolts.  

That's what I did, and just like in my post felt no guilt whatsoever in taking up their time and getting free parts. They having done their best to rip me off even worse than your do-nothing dealer wanted to do you, only so many years ago five different contingents of arrogant twenty-something reps have since come and gone, me long since forgotten by them, their utter incompetence never forgotten by me. 

The thing about turntables, and all this stuff really, is once you really understand it well there's all kinds of little tells the clueless give without even knowing it. Just like there's all kinds of little tells the ones who really know their way around do. Takes one to know one as they say. Which is how I am quite sure the guy they use to set up their million dollar AT/dAgostino/Wilson monstrosities is mediocre at best. 

Oh and btw if you really are seriously looking at a $7k Koetsu I would first be seriously researching the Soundsmith strain gauge. For about the same money you will have a totally SOTA cartridge, plus SOTA phono stage, plus affordable user replaceable styli for life.

Audiophiles. Can't tell the difference between disgust and anger. Have infinite patience while being ripped off. But quibble endlessly over minutia like how many degrees of separation there are between a character and Kevin Bacon. Maybe some audiophiles do deserve to be ripped off. They seem a little masochistic to me.