What's The Dumbest Thing You've Ever Heard An Audio Salesperson Say?

I don't let salespeople advise me about good sounding equipment as it is all subjective. They only care about money and are not necessarily audiophiles.

 

About 40 years ago my wife and I stopped into an audio store and were mooching about considering buying better speakers. The salesman said I have just the thing for you. Super quality,Reasonable price and the latest technology.

I forget the brand name but they were in fact halfway decent unts and the price was not too bad. He took the grills off and played his trump card. He asked me to watch the cones of the big bass speakers while he cranked them for a moment.

The speaker cones dutifully pulsed in and out in time to the music and as they were acoustic suspension jobs with soft rubber surrounds the woofer movement was very evident. He then turned to me and said Just look at the way those speakers perform. Push Pull technology at its finest. I barely suppressed a guffaw and told him that only Solid State Microelectrolytics would fill the bill but thanked him for his time.

 

To my "I'd like to hear those speakers" I received the response "No you don't, they're not for you". !!!!

Not so much dumb as arrogant and snobbish.
Why the response? Because I'd used Massive Attack's Mezzanine to just listen to another pair and he didn't like the music. The speakers were Reference 3a MM de Capo and ironically I had just e-mailed Reference asking who in my area sold their speakers. Upon returning home Reference had answered, naming that very store. I related my experience and they said Mezzanine was one of the recordings used to voice that speaker!

 

Someone I know was looking at a Sony surround system; you know one of those complete systems with speakers and everything.
She asked the salesman if her husbands turntable would work with it, he said no because it was a ‘digital’ system. The woman said that her husband already had a receiver that she thinks did surround sound and asked if the Sony speakers alone would be ok. He again said no, because they were special ‘digital’ speakers and would only work with Sony’s digital amplifier.

I told her that was ridiculous. That night she went back to the store to buy the speakers. The same salesman said that if she tried to use the speakers with the receiver that the components would blow up and probably trip the circuit breaker. And that the speakers would NOT be covered under warrantee and that they could tell. – LOL!!

I told her to go to another store.

 

I guess I've been lucky. I've gone into DB audio wearing tie-dye shirts and Guatemalan pants and asked to listen to the expensive stuff and they'd play it for me, listen to my questions, give reasonable answers and even turn me on to resources outside of the usual retail realm. Ultimately it worked for them because some sales were blown their way. I'd go to the Sound Well and other spots in Berkeley, obviously broke, and these folks would go along with the gag. As for the Good Guys and Best Buys, I'm usually grateful when I find somebody who's really into sound.

 

I remember a salesman using a crappy 128 kbps MP3 of Hotel California for testing speakers and just awful music, really compressed and the guy was like so proud about the sound of his CD.

 

I was once told that a home theatre receiver had it all - Pro-Logic, Dolby Digital and AC-3
I asked, most innocently of course, "aren't the last two the same thing??"

 

Here's a Tap-esque one:

Not related to hi-fi but a salesman tried to tell me one electric griller was better than another because it had 15 marked heat settings on its rotary dial whereas the other only had 10.

I said to him "I could just make a new label for the one with 10 settings and give it 15 settings and then they'd be the same." He quickly lost interest in me and moved on to the next sucker.

 

..yea, it does that too...

 

Interested in upgrading my Bryston 3B-ST, the salesperson states, "take the Bryston 4B-ST home, it is the obvious upgrade choice".

Took the amp home and was not impressed at all. It was the next Bryston product and what he sells, that's all. Have not returned to that shop.

Brian

 

Once I was looking at the MFSL DSOM gold cd at a Camelot music. The manager walks up to me and said "they didn't even make it DDD." Referring to the old Analog-Analog-Digital symbol that they used to put on cds.

I tried to explain what DDD really meant, and that I thought that analog actually recordings sounded better than digital recordings. He just looked at me like I was from another planet.

 

Salesperson: The information on a compact disc is data like on your computer hard drive. Just a bunch of 1s and 2s.

Me: Oh, you must be a Mac user.

(Note: this did not take place in the shop where I buy MY gear!)

Cheers,
Chris

 

I was looking at an outboard D/A converter once (Theta, IIRC) at a very snobby hi-end shop. The salesman was a very low-key type not given to exaggeration. We talked about what this unit could do for my system if I fed the digital output of my CD player into it vs. using the internal D/A converter. Finally, after hearing all kinds of platitudes and "faith-based engineering" claptrap, I had had enough. I told the guy that I would buy it if I could take the unit home and hook it up so that I could do an instant A/B comparison by switching between two line level inputs (the CD's converter vs. the outboard unit) to see if there was enough of a difference to warrant spending the $$$. With a straight face (and probably sensing the loss of a sale), the guy told me that I "probably wouldn't hear a difference, but you'll feel 'better' about your music after a week or two." I almost cra**ed my pants.

 

Wow, interesting stories, to say the least! I've been fortunate in that the high-end shops I used to frequent were all employing individuals who knew their gear, knew the competition, and made recommendations based on what I brought in to listen to. It has also been the late 80s since I've actually been in one of those stores, too, believe it or not. Most of my gear lately has been mail order.

The only thing remotely "dumb" was the time I went to listen to a pair of speakers at a newer high-end shop, and the one salesman said to the other, "take him to hear 'the boxes'". And then to me..."...because they sound like anything BUT boxes." Well, these were a pair of unfinished speakers (meaning, bare wood), and they had to be the most lifeless things I've ever heard--weak bass, a little too bright, not very good in other words. My friend and I left there and never went back....they didn't last very long after that. BTW, the speakers sounded very boxy.

Most of the dumb things I ever heard were at Best Buy...especially the time the Blue Shirt was telling a couple of clueless customers how a DSS (DirecTV) satellite dish rotated to tune in different satellites. Would be interesting, especially since DSS back then only HAD one satellite.

 

A classic Dave!

 

Back in 198? when the first lo-fi stereo VCR's came out my dad and I were told that the function of the Dolby NR on the VCR takes away all the crackles and pops of records. Huh? What does record noise have to do with a VCR?

I wonder if he worked at an appliance store if he told customers that putting your coffee in a microwave would make it taste more liquidy.

 

Jerry, you don't respect metalheads too much, do you? I love heavy metal and I love great sound. Metal as any music that you like needs quality reproduction.

P.S. Being a metalhead doesn't make a person stupid or low-class. Not to mention a second class customer if you're selling stuff and doing your job properly. Can't help feeling insulted by your post, personaly.

 

Whoaaa, Haaaaa haaaa.. So, you can see it from behind itself!

 

Yep, metalheads can come in all shapes and sizes. I'm one.

 

One option that you might not have considered is that you may be classified as a "non-annoying metalhead"customer. Don't take it personally.

Jerry, perhaps in the future try not to be too general in your statements here at Steve's.

 

Verrrrrry Classless Jerry, you represent the elitist know it all salesperson we love to ignore when it comes to purchasing audio gear. :thumbsdn:

 

"What's phase inverted?"