Visited a Store and was shunned

As others have made automotive analogies, I'll add mine. When I got out of the service in 1970, I went to work at a small Lincoln and Mercury dealership as a service advisor. We had a wise old salesman who shared that he learned never to judge a customer by appearance, He had an older gentleman cone in, dressed in overalls who wanted to look at cars. Longer story short, when he decided what he wanted, he went and got a paper lunch bag and pulled out a wad of bills and paid cash for a new Lincoln. Turned out he was the owner of a successful steak house.

I carried that thought with me through my career in the business and made it my policy to always under promise and over deliver, In later years, when I spent a lot of time in wholesale parts, I had a lot of customers who would always ask for me when putting in their body shop orders,
 

I can tell of my experience - NYC, Upper East Side, well known dealer representing high end brands and sole dealer for the two brands I was most interested in (Naim and Linn).

It was a quiet Friday at work, and I had several hours before I had to meet with anyone, so I walked the 8 blocks to the audio salon.  Spoke with the receptionist and told her that I was planning to purchase either CD Player A or Turntable B, but I wanted to buy one of those two that day.  Purchase was in the $3-5k range with taxes.  She said great and could I wait for a salesperson?  Yep.  No problem.

After roughly 15 minutes, a salesperson meets up with me in an empty sound room.  British dude, believe he was part of the overseas ownership team.  I tell him what my plans are for the day, he essentially ignores what I said, and launches into a soliloquy on cables and the importance of a single strand of wire.  I am like WTF and when I repeat what I was looking to do, the conversation turned to his personal life.  

After about an hour of this, I just left. Essentially stunned that I couldn't buy the exact component I wanted to buy.   

These days, I would rather buy w/o the audition, if this is what it takes to see something.

Rich 

@jallan I remember Sound Machine in Charlottesville.  I graduated in 1977 and stopped by the store a number of times.  My preferred store though was the one in the Barracks Road shopping center near the movie theater.  The name escapes me now but they were there the entire time I lived in Charlottesville.

@jl35 that might have been me selling you your system, or my colleagues Blair or manager Harvey

I graduated in 1978 with a BA in Environmental Science and then on to Berkeley in Geology 

@salectric that was a very nice store one block from ours. We salesmen were friendly and listened to each other’s systems. I listened to eight Sonus Blue cartridge styli to pick out the best sounding three as they were prone to collapse, and used them in my turntable until about 1983.

I can still taste the Grillswiths and ice cream fried on a donut , the name escapes me. We probably knew multiple people!