Why are brick and mortar HiFi dealers so bad?

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

I truly enjoyed going to high-end stores when I lived in L.A. Yeah, some places were run by high-handed snobs and others featured systems that just couldn't cut the mustard, but I always did my best to buy locally whenever possible.  What a luxury being able to walk into a place and hear true high-end sound!  It's something that allowed me to develop both an ear and sensibility.  It's only recently that I moved to a tiny town thousands of miles away from retailers and've been forced to turn to mail order.

@millercarbon

If someone were reading your post and didn’t actually know better, they might arrive at the conclusion that the better audio stores are simply catering to the wrong people.

You seem to be inferring if a consumer has reached a certain financial strata that their hearing and taste declines considerably at an inverse direction than their financial resources. You also infer that their intelligence suffers at just the moment that their financial success is ironically on the uptick. The more financial resources someone has, they must be dumb, with no hearing and no taste.

This is a troubling trend indeed.

In all sincerity, what you seem to be describing as your ideal audio retailer is more like a hobbyist's clubhouse. The idea that you should be able to drop by with your gear, interconnects and a desire to just play around is actually kindof of quaint when you think about it.

Once again, these people are in the business of making money. Those that do, stay in business, those that don't.... I remember a few shops like you describe back in the day. They usually evolved from being in the repair, tube, mom & pop shop into a hifi shop. Usually owned by a bench tech, likely a WWII era tech at that. The military trained alot of wonderful people who helped our hobby develop. Unfortunately, its a flawed business model today.