Would you pay to audition speakers

I kind of equate this to a car dealer asking to check your credit before giving a test drive. As a retailer be it car sales, high end audio or whatever you accept the fact that you will work really hard on a deal and not get it. When that happens no matter how unfair it is you have to put a smile on your face and move on to the next prospect.

I have a similar great experience with a salesman who was at a tweeter in chicago (suburbs). I went in to the store to buy some cheap head phones and ended up spending a couple hours in their hearing all kinds of different set ups. At the time I only had a Denon avr 3200(which I was pretty proud of,lol) but he showed me some serious stuff and opened up a few new worlds to me and raised the bar for me. In a nut shell after that anything I could buy from him I did at full asking price, which I was happy to pay since its hard to find sales people of his caliber. Now I was still pretty small potatoes compared to many of his customers but I did my part.

Now however thanks partly to him I can only afford to buy the equipment I want used here or through other sources. But the point is his free demo for a 20.00 head phone customer earned him thousands in sales.