"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

 

 

gabor2525

Showing 3 responses by czarivey

Maan I finally got myself financially solid at my 50’s (I’m guessin it’s finally time) and decided to get G-wagon. As I’ve never lived on credit cards, I wanted to purchase it for cash. The dealerships were declining selling it for cash even when I had more than solid sources of income LOL!!! They get more earnings on crazy bank fees they charge so they weren’t interested at all.

To make long story short, I traveled to Germany and got what I wanted instead. The factory direct purchases for foreigners in Bremen are so AWSOME with greatest time spent there.and in addition ended up with savings for the total purchase including shipping. After all I decided to stay in Germany for another month and get my teeth DONE and saved another pile of bucks on that + undisputed and undefeated german quality!  YaVoll!

My brother who has a lot deeper pocket then I went to get BMW X6 to the dealership and because he was dressed too casual, dealers noted that it’s probably not the car for him.

Many dealers are same here culturally, not only in high-end audio shops.

@cleeds Exactly there are no bank fees that dealers get kick-back from. Therefore dealers try to void selling vehicles for cash today.

@cleeds

I could not get better rate, because I’ve never had credit card. Even despite my clear and sound mortgage history, the bank doesn’t give me good rate. Many sleeky dealers start to explain about different pricing bs and different "dealer fees" etc...

You must understand me that hitting one dealership like that I dialed Mercedes Benz customer service to file a complaint and the rep herself advised me to call factory direct and shared her personal experience.

A call to factory direct sales got me a free airfare ticket and hotel stay for a week for the starters just to feel the difference instead of hustle here in our beloved USA.