Would you pay to audition speakers

This is why brick and mortar and many businesses are in trouble they forget about the basic fundamentals of selling. Its called "value". If you offer customers a good value by combining customer service, professionalism and convience you will build a sucessful business. Some customers are tire kickers, some will buy online. But many if they have the financial resources will prefer to purchase from someone who provides time saving service.

If you walk into a store and you know more about audio that the person in the store, then maybe they have not earned the right to be your dealer. On the other hand if you walk into a store and they are able to show you better ways to do things then they may be worth the extra money.

$ 500.00 black mail does not seem like a good way for a dealer to earn your business. I would look elseware. Or buy speakers here and resell if they dont sound good in your system. It will probably still be cheaper.

Would you buy a car without a test drive?

Over the last 8 years I've bought 4 new cars. Each of these cars I took for a test drive and never was I asked to put down some money.

I tried some cars and didn't like them, others were great. The BMW dealer I stick to let me test the drive cars, even some I couldn't afford. He knew I was gonna buy one of the cars. I bought them there because the service offered was good.

A fee of $500 is ridiculous in my opinion. If it was $20 I might do it, but $500 seems outrageous.

A local dealer here does the same thing like this:

You must buy them and audition for less than 2 weeks.
Return them if you don't like them for a refund
less 20% restocking fee.

Same song different day. I shop elsewhere.

If they are expensive speakers for in home audition, and they deliver the speakers to your home, unpack, set them up; than I think $500 is reasonable.

As a dealer I welcome people to come into my home and audition any and all of the speakers I have in stock.
If I have a good rapport with the client I would take a pair of speakers to the client's home to audition with his/her equipment IF the client showed me he was serious about purchase or had purchased other items from me.

IF it became a situation that I was investing a lot of time and trouble to bring speakers to the client's home and he was not buying anything then it would be proper for the client to pay for this service.

$500 to audition speakers sounds steep, but it could be a good value if one is considering a very high end speaker.

My last client who I took speakers to his home that he did not end up buying paid me $100 and I was fine with that. I asked him for $50 which did not even cover my time and/or gas, but he gave me $100 on his own goodwill.

I would never charge for demo in my showroom, but it is a lot of work to take a pair of speakers into a client's home and set them up for the client to demo.

It should boil down to the relationship with the dealer, and both dealer and client should act in a fair manner in my opinion.