Can I expect to pay full retail for a new system?

There's a truly snooty "high-end" dealer near me (in waltham, MA) who will not discount anything, ever, even by 1 cent (so the only thing I ever bought there was a $10 bottle of record cleaning fluid). The list price policy might not have totally turned me off, but that combined with all the "attitude" sure did.

If you're on audiogon a lot, you can buy current-model, slightly used gear all the time at 50-60-70% of new. And a lot of the sellers on audiogon are way nicer than some of the "high-end" dealers.

There are some excellent dealers, too of course. But if they try to intimidate you if you ask for a reasonable discount, personally, I'd go elsewhere.....

just my 2 cents

Honest1, I agree, Paul is a good salesman at the snooty Audio dealer in Waltham. The other one you mentioned, once ragged on my than-current gear (loudly) in the lobby of the store, & in full hearing of other customers & employees. And some of it I had bought from those guys at their previous store !

BTW, I just bought a 3 m.o. pair of speakers & stands (that they sell) for $3350 w/shipping on audiogon. List price (that they always insisted on with me) is around $5775. Plus sales tax. And the audiogon seller has been way easier to deal with......

I don't know why some of these stores don't have "Snooty Audio" as the name of their store. Or, "Snotty Pretentious Audio" maybe. They should do a sketch on SNL, with a pompous salesperson (played by Will Ferrell perhaps) insulting all the customers & sneering at their current gear......

It reminds me of the time an audio store in So. NH tried very, very hard to sell me a set of $10,000 speaker cables.......for speakers I had paid $2500 for, & an amp I'd paid $1000 for. Apparently, every cable they had for less than $10,000 just wasn't quite good enough.....

Has anyone notice that many high end stores seem to have these same 3 or 4 types of salesmen?

--a slight, scrawny guy with a beard & glasses, non-descript personality, able to carry around gigantic full-range speakers by himself with no problem.

--a big, portly guy, sometimes with or w/o beard or glasses, sometimes the friendliest salesman in the store.

--a Tall, pompous, snooty guy whos purpose is to insult the customer's current equipment.

--occasionally, a leftover hippie from the 60's who you can just tell ate way too many mushrooms at one point.

A friend & I once theorized that when audio stores advertise for a new salesman, they advertize for whatever type they don't have (wanted, "tall, snooty audio salesman", or "slight, scrawny audio salesman with a beard & glasses"). They need a balance of the 4 types in each store; 2 big, portly types, or 2 tall snooty types in one store wouldn't work out at all.

It's just a theory tho......