restorer-john
Grand Contributor
When I recently replaced my speakers, I went to several dealers. The first thing they did was ask me what I have, and pissed all over it.
That was pretty much standard operating procedure in HiFi stores and incredibly short sighted. People were too polite to call it out, they just bought somewhere else and never went back. I know salesmen that employed that tactic.
He reversed the channels once, and another time connected a speaker out of phase.
Many times the old out-of-phase speaker was done on purpose. If the customer called it out, the salesman would thank the guy, pretend to look embarrassed and hurriedly fix it. The customer would feel extremely clever and the entire landscape of the sales interaction would change. Basically, it flipped the expertise from the salesman to the customer and empowered them.
I haven't been into a proper HiFi store for about 12 years. The nearest one is 30km away, only opens on appointment or at odd hours and when I last peered in the window on a Sunday, doesn't appear to offer anything of interest.