In terms of accepting a typical dealer markup, the ethical answer for me is whether I want to listen to a product before buying. I recently auditioned 12 pairs of speakers at 7 different stores before buying a pair of speakers that I love. From the perspective of my time, that was a lot more efficient than doing 12 separate in-home trials from direct-to-consumer speaker companies along with mailing the speakers back to the manufacturer. The mark-up is the cost I was willing to pay for this convenience.
I am open to direct-to-consumer selling models, but would need to be pretty sure that a component is likely to be the right fit for my needs before doing an in-home trial.
I am open to direct-to-consumer selling models, but would need to be pretty sure that a component is likely to be the right fit for my needs before doing an in-home trial.