Visited a Store and was shunned


I live in an area where brick & mortar stores are not easily assessable to demo equipment. While traveling for business, I decided to stop by an establishment on the U.S. West coast. My interest was in the Dynaudio Confidence 20 since I’m looking to upgrade from the Contour 20i. I’m not here to name names or throw anyone under the bus, just purely to voice my frustration and disbelief on how I was treated.

I was greeted with skepticism and a general lack of interest in discussing the product. There were two gentlemen working that day and neither had any interest in answering questions or providing a listening demo. As a matter of fact, when I asked to listen to the Confidence 20 speakers one of them immediately said “no way”. Both speakers were on stands sitting next to several amplifiers so it wouldn’t have taken much time to setup.

I was intent on making a purchase that day and having the speakers shipped to my residence, but decided to leave the store based on my experience.

It’s a shame that most of us have to relay on equipment reviews when establishments such as this lack interest in the customers that support the hobby.

vette5451

I live out in the Chicago suburbs and while we no longer have hifi shops in every strip mall, we've got a few. I'd walk into any of the shops after work wearing my day glo tee shirt, hard tat head 'hair'  and be treated like i matter. Anyone in sales that doesn't know how to treat people will be very hungry until they learn.

@daveyf 

There’s a similar story involving Ozzy Osborn in a music store asking about some expensive Black Sabbath posters on the wall. As the story goes, it wasn’t until other customers started staring and asking for autographs owner of the store realized who he was and stopped being rude. Ozzy ended up buying 10’s of thousands of Black Sabbath posters that he had signed years ago.

I live in the Los Angeles area, and visit brick and mortar stores somewhat often.

Despite only a few minor purchases at most of them, I am treated well. 

I usually have no problems having systems played for me.  

Try this the next time...  wear a high caliber watch.  I have a single nice watch and several plastic Casio's and a few Swiss Army watches for everyday use.  

My nice watch is a Breitling Super Avenger, which is a diver styled watch that has a nice polished finish to it.  It's big and it stands off your wrist a good 3/4 inch in height, and the face is almost some 2 inches across in diameter.  It gets attention fast, for watch aficionados and fellas with a mild interest in watches.  That watch has gotten me test drives in cars I have no business being in...  Anyways, if it doesn't work, hey, at least you got a nice watch out of your social experiment.  Hah!