Convincing your local dealer to let you try speakers at home

Not being a hi fi dealer but a wholesaler to them, I can tell you that every single time I loan pair of speakers to anyone, no matter how skilled, the speakers come back with some form of damage.  Especially if they are shipped.   Enough damage that I can no longer sell them as new and must discount them by 10% to account for damage.  The cost is real for the dealer and he cannot pass this cost on.  

No one blames the user, we all know this happens, but nonetheless you can't loan all your new speakers out for trial as your entire inventory is damaged. Some dealers do this by having a dedicated loaner inventory.  Or are good about having enough sales that they can sell off the "B Stock" as they go, and keep shipping new stock.  But it's worth considering that demoing a 50,000 pair of speakers in your room will cost someone 5,000.   This is why not everyone does it.  

Brad

Home demos are such a conundrum.  The speaker/room influence interaction is so dramatic that no two rooms sound the same so the speakers will sound different in each of those rooms.  I like @sounds_real_audio  idea of a dealer visit.  It is true a way to listen at home is an important feature of purchasing hi end home gear.  It's easy with everything but speakers and turntables that require set up and space.  In our pro business, when we do a demo for a studio, we go set it up for the customer- the dealer doesn't do the demo.  The results for everyone is much better this way,   IF we did that in hi fi would possible buyers be more comfortable if the company itself set up the demo or the dealer?

Brad      

@rsf507

 curious if companies did home demos then why need a dealer network? Are you suggesting a company that is located in CA ship a speaker to someone in FL then fly out to do the setup? I would imagine this type of scenario would raise the price of the component by hundreds if not thousands of dollars

No of course I’m not suggesting such an extreme example. I’m only stating the fact that if you want to do a demo well, you have to be there. Room and placement are a huge part of the sound. Without that, people often end up buying a speaker that is the opposite of a room (room is bass light, so "demo winning" speaker is bass heavy; room is highly reflective with a lot of glass, the best demo speaker is dark with less top end ). This is the value of a local dealer, they can come to you. Or you can experiment with their facility and determine how the speakers you currently own sound in their demo spaces, then compare to other speakers.

@hilde45

Yes many companies do send loaners, including several of the dealers that sell ATC for us. All the folks you mention have significant sales and are later businesses. If you are smaller, independent, or your main focus is more expensive high end speakers (over 5K), it could be quite different. Typically these sellers do a home demo locally by doing it themselves.

How about this: Would a customer fly out to a demo room that is set up properly? This is not as difficult, RT airfare could be reasonable and controlled by the customer. If the customer buys the speaker you refund his airfare.

Brad