Best place to buy car audio?

Sorry about my spelling befor hand.The only spell checker is in rich text.

Anyway I do like to buy from a local shop but scince I have stationed to AZ I just have not found a shop that will help you out on prices and they always seem to want to sell you something you don't need. Then again where I used to get all my stuff from befor I always hung out there on my lunch break in Highschool. I still swing by and say high when I am in town that is just the type of shop it was.  Now the people on this sight if you had a shop in my part of town I would get from you because it is some one you feel like you know. Getting stuff on flea bay  you do take a chance on line but then again if you have a tight budget sometimes it's a better route but by the same token you should not expect the product manufacture to stand behind the product either nor any local shop and unless you know what your doing pay some money out and have the product tested by a shop and install it but don't hold them responable if the amp dose not work.

xtremej, it sounds like you have a nice shop and those are the few extra things that would make me want to buy form your shop that and customer service is a big part of it, with out the high pressure sales that you get from some of the big box stores that don't know anything about the product that they sell and just make it up as they go along, had that happen befor.  Ok I am done rambling

Raven, so you are saying that just becuase you had one "bad" customer out of the thousand or so you have done work for that you will not help anyone out ever again? You probably made 500$ or so off this 2000$ purchase in his good car. Just because he was an idiot about saying you ruined his amp, think about it if it was just a ground problem. It would have taken you 5 minuites to fix, you could have charged him 25$ for 5 min work, and think of the repeat business that could have generated for you. He already spent 2g on his other car with you. So helping him out with a quick 5 minuite ground wire problem on his beater car (which you could have made a quick 25$ on) he might have told 10 friends to buy from you because you were willing to help him out in a time a need.

Now with your new policy, the first person who buys a big system from you, then goes back with a quick problem in his wifes car (for example) that he didnt purchase from you, you are going to tell him "sorry, you didnt buy it here, get out of my shop"  He will never buy another system from you in all of his 5-10 new cars. This could potentioally cost you over 10,000 over the years. not to mention him telling 20 people not to buy from you because you werent willing to help him out with a 5 min problem. That could lead to 100,000$ loss.

Its your business, run it the way you want.

I can understand where Raven is coming from, I have helped out a lot of people who buy things elsewhere. I am the "new shop" with more expereince than the others locally,  I'll share this much almost every person I have helped has come in to my store to buy merchandise or have me install equipment for them afterwards. This is not always the case though and it can pizz a guy off pretty quick when some putz blames you for damaging his dime store junk he bought on flee-bay.  I just had this happen with a boss amp last week , amp was doa on arrival client blamed me? I was not smiling. But not all clients are evil and I got over it.  Being helpful can pay off but it can get you burned also. But I beleive the pro's out weigh the cons. My .02 cents.

Your mising the point here racefan15......... your not thinking like a business owner again. Ravendarat stated one case and IMO if that same customer came back to me with another problem I would kindly say "no, we would charge you for the time spent on it." If someone from a shop or box store charged you $ 25 for 5 minutes ( that's $ 300 per hour ) of work to potentially fix a ground problem I don't think you'll be telling all your friends about how "good this shop was." I would be telling people that this place was extremely expensive, but knew what they were doing, but still didn't fix the problem & charged me for it !

Now it's human nature to focus and remember the bad experiences and also to wallow in them as well. Taking from one bad experience and learning from it is good business sense ! If you allow the same thing to happen with another customer in another scenario, but this time the customer raises a BIG stink about how you " damaged " his eBay amplifier that was working fine before..... well you just aquired a damaged amp or will have to pay for fixing it. Not good business sense and a good saying that I've heard in the past is " ...........fool me once and shame on you.... fool me twice then shame on me "

or to quote Great White    " Once Bitten, Twice Shy "

Ok, Ian Hunter actually, but no one but me is going to remember Mott the Hoople here.....

Did you actually read what I did? If you are someone who does this for a living ( I really dont know because I dont know anything about you) then you would relise that this wasnt 5 minutes of trouble shooting. My total time including talking to the customer before and after service and what not had me in for about 45 minutes. I run my side of the buisness and this is time I could have easily spent installing a deck for another customer WHO DID buy it from me, but instead I was nice to this guy and he tried to burn me on it. So you ask if I will ever do it again? Well if the guy comes in with some low end piece of junk that most likely defective off the get go, then ya I will refuse because I wont put myself in a vunerable situation for the sake of making an alphimisonic amp work that was boughten somewhere else and installed by a driveway mechanic. If that same person comes to me with a Brand Name amp bought from a local retailer, regardless of whether it was me or not, and installed it themselves and asks me to look at it, then ya I probally will becuase the chance of the amp being defective out of the box decreases huge and if the amp IS defetive then its simple to say, "you need to take this back and exchange it because it doesnt work" Simple and done. Someone who buys it off fleebay and is well aware that they either have no return/exchange privaliage or the policy is their but a pain to work with, is far more likely to try to screw me over. They can go and try it on someone else cause momma didnt raise no fool.