Why are brick and mortar HiFi dealers so bad?

Head out to Verona, NJ and all your problems will be solved.  Tell Johnny Audiogon sent you.

Your're welcome to Stockholm, Sweden at any time ;)

https://perfect-sense.se/

I agree with 2leftears (above)

The only good ones I know are both retired now. All the ones left in the Seattle area are awful. Maybe its me, but they seem even worse now than 20-30 years ago. Back then most places were happy to help and indulge me or even just let me alone to listen. And when I say indulge, they let me bring my own interconnect, CD player, amp in the store for side-by-sides. This was at several different stores. One even let me lug a Dynaco ST400 and compare with his ten times as expensive tube amp. Not sure they would these days. Maybe some would. I don't know.

IMO these guys are their own worst enemies. The superior "you're not worthy" attitude they project is short sighted yet purposeful. They are after all going for the market niche of guys with ten times or more the money than brains. They know hooking just one of these is worth hundreds of thousands. I'm not kidding. A recent system at Definitive was $1.3M. That's not even the fun part. They will get that same loser for another $50 large, easy, by blathering him up with acoustic treatment, dedicated power, basically all the same stuff the same sort here are always knee-jerking onto. GIK, anyone?

What they really want though is Home Theater. That's where the real money is made. Plus those guys, they know right off the bat they're deaf as doorknobs else they'd never go 5 minutes with as bad as multi-channel sounds. But with HT they get to sell 3, 4, 5 times as much stuff.

No wonder they have such disdain for us who just want a really good sounding stereo.

I once concurred with the OP, but then I met John Rutan at Audioconnection.
He’s the only dealer I have found in 40 years that not only knows his stuff, and doesn’t try to sell you anything until your are ready.

Bob