I suspect anyone with a history of visiting brick-and-mortar shops would’ve seen a fair span of the spectrum in seller tactics.
The account of
@MattHooper (IIRC?) of the dealer who gave the in-home audition while sitting between the speakers looking at the listener / prospective buyer, I’ll not forget the mental image that conjured. “Hey, bud, don’t you have a call to make outside…?” Matt you type like someone who has considerable reflective ability and an accommodating nature; I could be wrong, but that’s how your tone goes and those speaker auditions you recounted seem like situations where your dealer-visitor / kid-on-sales-floor lacked sense in their chosen trade. And you were non-confrontational about it. Nice of you.
I chalk up that sort of seller behavior(s) to being like anything else in life - some people who choose (or land in) a job just don’t wind up being good at it, be it for lack of interest or instincts, common sense, educability or something else. And some of them sell audio kit.
I go in with the mindset I probably
won’
t be left alone by someone hoping to make a sale. And that I
will be accosted about how critical a synergistic
upgrade amounting to more than I want, should prove.
So instead of preemptively getting dealership jitters each time, I handle each first encounter like I would if taking a toddler into a grocery store with me while I shop ingredients for a massive holiday feast: I pretext the ordeal with
my several expectations and simple, concise rules, and I define the outcome if they aren’t met. It’s pleasing how often it works. Not always, but very often.
The first time encounters that are naturally great and organic can be relatively few, so for the big decision one-time trips, I’ve BYOB’ed (Brought My
Own Bourbon). Literally. I’ve never done that at a shop I felt didn’t deserve my biz - bottle stays in the saddlebag those times.
One of my better fist-time encounters was when I met with the former distributor of Ortofon for my area. Top-tier resort-grade shop run by a man of genuine class, that distributed several aggressive boutique brands to an highly affluent market. We hit it off and after some listening-just-for-the-fun-of-it (on a quiet day), I was, without warning, rung up with a considerable discount on my stylus - it amounted to a
lot of money not spent by me, we’ll say.
After that, I used a vinyl connection of mine, to acquire a NOS Japan press copy of his favorite demo LP (Sade, his was a Canadian pressing bought when he was in Uni of Toronto) the next time I visited; the album cost me a fraction of what he saved me on the stylus, but I could tell it was a gesture he wasn’t accustomed to seeing from his clients.
Always remember, positive experiences go both ways, and dealers have a lot of customer encounters that might shape who they are and how they act. Not always, but
very often