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Ever feel like a "low dollar" customer that your dealer doesn't think worth their time?

I'm a careful researcher for audio gear and I also understand the value of brick and mortar stores. I am not OCD and I am not an irascible haggler. Indeed, I have told my local stores that if they carry something I like, I will buy from them and not try to find it cheaper on the net. I have purchased major pieces of gear from them.

Nevertheless, one local shop is erratic in how it treats me. Emails can take a long time to get acknowledged, and often exchanges take several back-and-forths to get clear questions answered. This shop sells gear at my price point and up to 10x more (think Wilson speakers, $7k power cords). I often feel I'm more like a fly buzzing around their heads than a valued customer trying to establish a customer-dealer relationship. I am trying to be loyal, but it makes me want to shop online. I could be reading the situation wrong, but this is definitely a pattern.

Has anyone else had the sense that they were too much of a "low dollar" customer to be worth the dealer's time?
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Showing 1 response by bdp24

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bdp24
9,510 posts
 

@bomd, I too have found Echo to be cool. I had been at the old location, and recently accompanied a friend of mine to the new store in Beaverton when he went there to get a new belt for his Pro-Ject turntable. Though it was only a (iirc) $20 sale, they treated him as if he was a valued customer.

Their demo rooms were well treated acoustically, unlike the NW shop you mentioned. In that shop I heard the worst demo I've ever experienced, of the excellent Magnepan 30.7 (the first stop on Wendell Diller's North American tour), which should have sounded great but didn't in the shop's atrociously bad room. It was like a cement bunker, with no wall treatment.

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