@mitch4t,
The seller is simply trying to get compensate for his time. While it’s not common to charge a fee for demo, the store owner is well within its rights to do so. As others have mentioned, if you don’t like the terms look elsewhere.
At this point, only you know the worthiness of these monoblocks. We can all criticize the unfair demo policy but at the end of the day only you know how rare or common are the opportunities to demo these amps. To me, $17k is a large sum and I would like to be 110% certain that they will work in my system before I dump this kind of money. So if the demo fee is not ridiculous and the store has something else to offer you can possibly use then I would take the leap of faith.
The flip side of this transaction is you take the risk of buying them unheard on a used market and ‘deal’ with reselling process if you don’t end up liking them.
The seller is simply trying to get compensate for his time. While it’s not common to charge a fee for demo, the store owner is well within its rights to do so. As others have mentioned, if you don’t like the terms look elsewhere.
At this point, only you know the worthiness of these monoblocks. We can all criticize the unfair demo policy but at the end of the day only you know how rare or common are the opportunities to demo these amps. To me, $17k is a large sum and I would like to be 110% certain that they will work in my system before I dump this kind of money. So if the demo fee is not ridiculous and the store has something else to offer you can possibly use then I would take the leap of faith.
The flip side of this transaction is you take the risk of buying them unheard on a used market and ‘deal’ with reselling process if you don’t end up liking them.