The store in Bellingham, WA the OP refers to is Reference Media owned by Rob Rivinius and his wife. I’ve purchased several products from Rob over the years and he is a true gentleman and a consummate professional. He represents several high end lines including Boulder, Acoustic Signature, Koetsu, Egglestonworks, Ortofon, Martin Logan, Rega, Sonus Faber, among many other audiophile quality name brands. Rob was kind enough with his time and expertise to fly to my new home in Idaho to set up and install $10k worth of tt, tonearm, and cartridge. No idea who is on Rob’s payroll currently but I’m not convinced by the OP’s story that anyone treated him rudely. More than likely he had an item he wanted to trade in that had no value to a high end store and which can probably be purchased at Best Buy or from any online retailer. If you are going to walk into a Ferrari dealer with a Pinto to trade in, you are probably in the wrong store.
"High end" store snobbery
Our county lies in a fairly remote part of the country.Our major city of 100,000 has one "high end" shop so to speak.
I visited them yesterday.The store has limited selection of decent stuff-a few McIntosh amps.Marantz.Paradigm ,Focal,Sonus faber etc.No Wilsons or Bel Canto category.
I asked then if they take trade ins-I want to upgrade my one year old Yamaha RX4 AVR,worth $500 retail.
They said they only take high end components for trade i.e.McIntosh etc.
After that conversation, the 3 store employees pretty will ignored my presence and I continued browsing their meagre inventory.
Lo and behold!
In a corner I spotted about 30 items-old Pioneer,Yamaha amps and even an equalizer from the 1970s.Prices ranged from $75 to $500.
I asked :"what are these"
response from employee:"oh, those are items we are familiar with as they were swapped out for upgraded gear by our customers."
Thanks for tolerating my rant...
Gabe