Fee for home audition

I would never pay 5% for a frankly worthless 1 hour demo. You need to listen to it for longer than an hour to know if it really sounds good to your ears with various types of music and a DAC pairing(s). For say a $2,500 streamer that’s $125/hour. Either this guy is new and won’t be in business for long or he really doesn’t take your potential business seriously and is using this scheme to turn you away. Either way, take your business elsewhere and make sure to tell him why you are doing this. Either he learns from it or he doesn’t care and deserves to suffer financially from lost sales.

If a dealer has been helpful and I’ve spent their time I would not look elsewhere but look for a reasonable discount from them. If you want to try this streamer I would call multiple dealers around the country and get the best deal you can get with a 0 penalty return policy. You will do much better that way. Some of the snobby dealers get pissed when you are looking for a deal …… but whatever. I get 20% minimum off everything I buy in the rare times I buy new. I don’t have any high end stores around me anymore so go by reviews. The only time they spend with me is a short phone call so I call that fair easy money. 

Thanks for the replies. I was looking at the Grimm mu1. So 5% is not exactly a small amount. 

So this D bag wants to charge you over $600 to try a streamer in your house for an hour! Seems like a totally reasonable request even for a weekend or more. Move on brutha.

5% fee for a piddly home demo time? Or any kind of fee in general?
I’ve been in this hobby for 50 years and shopping from dealers in the high-end strata for over twelve+ years, I have NEVER been set up for a “fee”. And you cannot make a proper assessment in just an hour.

MY TAKE

Most likely:

DEALER has already pegged you - either fairly or grossly unfairly - in his own mind already, as an unlikely guy to close the deal post auditions. So he floats the time clock and egregious penalty fee terms to further test the waters with two more cash outcome options for his pocketbook.

option 1 :he sees you as really eager to close if you agree to his terms upfront regardless and especially if you eventually agree to buy it after the time clocked audition

if you ascede to his bizarre request upfront , then he likely brands you as a ripe sales target likely to pay a lot closer to his asking MSRP, and you will likely fritter away most - if not all- of any sales discount he may otherwise offer you.

option 2: If you agree to his bizarre terms upfront but somehow still manage to resist his time clocked sales pressure tactics,

he still hedged his bets and collects a windfall return on a WTF sales call for a piddly time spent out of shop salescall.

TAKEAWAY

He is a must to avoid for me. There are plenty of other audio shops and other peer or better brands to choose from.