Warranty...good,bad and the ugly

I spent 25 years (years ago) in the stereo business.Mac is trying to protect their dealers by protecting their dealers profit margins.Bluntly - their aim is give you a powerful disincentive to not buy from anyone except your local dealer and also give their dealers the confidence to try and make each sale of Mac equipment profitable.
How you as a consumer feel about this says something about your retail showroom experiences over the years - maybe no one ever turned you onto a really musical piece of gear as part of the shopping experience or maybe (like a lot of folks) the pleasure of buying great sounding stuff is incomplete unless you also got the worlds cheapest price?
The problem is that brick and mortar retailers need to make a profit and more of a profit than folks who only ship stuff out and maintain no showroom facilities.
Do you like to listen before you buy? Is the experience and reputation of your local dealers of any importance to you? I also understand that it's pretty late in this game - most likely only a few major cities will be able to support a "hi-fi" shop - a lot of music oriented dealers aren't going to make it thru the current downturn.
Personally - never have owned any Mac gear. Have always respected the build quality.

Jab, sounds like we have the same dealer. One of the local dealers here will not negotiate any on the price, even pieces that are clearly negotiated elsewhere. I won't go into their other annoyances but I've called other dealers in nearby states and they always tell me how many people call because the local dealer here is turns them off. There are two McIntosh dealers here and the shop I'm talking about was just recently added as the 2nd one. The first dealer will come off about 7% and the new one won't come off any. Fair is fair but full retail price is economic suicide on resell.

A little off the subject, but I need to get this out.

I own a Cary CD player that its disc drawer gave me problems.
Two times I had to ship it to Cary for repairs.

The player was suppose to be new (I bought it from a gent off of Audiogon)the seller had some sort of relationship with Cary, and the first repair he paid for.
The second I had to pay for.

Both times Cary charged about $500 for the repair and the repairs were only 4 months apart!

When you buy a product you are also buying the warrantee (or not) Warrantees add to the cost of a product just like parts do, the better the warrantee, the more expensive. Some companies feel that cheaper warrantees allow them to price their products to better compete in the marketplace, leaving the buyer to self insure, so to speak. Bryston doesn't give you a 20 year warrantee, it is included in the purchase price, rest assured. They feel that the extra cost associated with maintaining such a liberal warrantee is what their customers want. It is their business model. Warrantees are like tube,circuits, wire and all the other stuff that goes into making an audio product, subject to mark-up and profit like anything else. Bryston's 20 year warrantee isn't free.