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  3. 1020660993

Voodoo in Ann Arbor

I am spending the weekend at a friend's house. He recently purchased my JMlab Tantal 509's and is in the market for a power amp. Since he lives close to Ann Arbor we decided to go shopping there--supposedly, good high end stores are located near major universities.

Anyway, we called Audio/Video Showcase and it was such a fiasco! What a salesman they had--he was trying to sell us *watts*...he wanted us to buy a Denon power amp (which to my friend and I looked questionable) without auditioning it and at full list price! Although the store claimed to be high end (Conrad Johnson, Bryston, Musical Fidelity, Denon) he was reluctant to have us audition equipment. Finally my friend asked this salesman to rig some JMlab Cobalt (2-way) with a Musical Fidelity dual mono 85WPC integrated and the MF CDP. The salesman used Tara Labas snakes, from power cord to speaker cables. IT SOUNDED HORRIBLE!!!!! It wasn't the JMlabs, as we're familiar with their sound.

Unbelievable! This was an absolutely awful experience. Why did this happen, we ask ourselves. Was it because we're not Anglos? Anyway we would give this store a 3 out a possible 10.
psychicanimal

Showing 1 response by sean

sean
6,231 posts
 
I think that we've all had experiences like this, regardless of race or location. Some people just don't know how to run a business. As such, the "bad" ones are only worried about the color of what is in your pocket i.e. "green" and could care less about you as a person or customer.

The smart ones know that anybody can become a good customer and such an occurance might not take place overnight. They are willing to invest their time and knowledge hoping that planting a seed now will help you to "take root" with them as the gardener later. Those are the ones that you want to seek out and find. It might take some doing though, as there are FAR more "bad" shops than "good". If that wasn't the case, this forum and others like it would be filled with "kudo's" rather than "complaints". Sean
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