Personally I've had better experiences with small home based dealers, Yes not as big of selections but I've been able to find what I'm looking for and no hard sell, in fact they have told me NOT to buy things even though I was ready to buy with cash in-hand. Honestly goes a long way and now I'm a repeat customer.
"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
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- 67 posts total
While the owner of a B&M audio retailer hopefully shares a passion for home audio, they are still trying to make profit from what is a very difficult business model under the best of conditions. They are competing against a huge increase in direct-sales manufacturers and on-line retailers covering a vast array of different audio products, an explosion of on-line product reviews (from both professional reviewers and owners of the product) that allow buyers to gain in-depth information on just about any product including readily available pricing information, and easily accessible on-line resources and expertise that may very well exceed the expertise of their own sales staff. While facing the above, the B&M audio store owner has to somehow cover their costs, including:
To your observation of,
Why would a business that is trying to make a profit want to add to that pile of 30 pieces of used equipment? What some of those retailers could do better, is to help their customers without being snarky when it appears some don't have a lot of money to spend. Maybe refer customers like you to the store's website, which could have instructions on how to sell gear on-line (for those who are new to it), and having a weekly instructional listening session where a group of prospective customers can show up and listen as a group to gear and hear discussions by the store's sales staff, or hosting other customer-friendly programs. Being snarky to customers and potential/future customers is never a good business plan. |
@gabor2525 did you buy the gear from them that you were trying to trade in? |
- 67 posts total