Best Buy

[Sherardp]

So I went to Best Buy and visited the Magnolia Home Theater Center, asked a few of the young employees about Polk Audio and all I got was "Whats Polk Audio?" I thought it was rather funny to hear that, they did have some def techs in the Magnolia Center and I was able to demo them. I really didnt get into the Def techs simply because I went there to review the LSi series. After that I was being asked allot of questions about my setup, power amps, screen size, HD DVD, sub, etc. The two employees looked as if they were surprised to hear about a setup like mine and I consider my HT midlevel. I did finally get to review Blu-ray, and was not in awe as I was with HD DVD, I had the intention of buying the player and shipping it back to Japan( home for now) but held off. I simply walked away with Troy and Terminator 3 on HD DVD. Great to be back in the USA just wish I could have gotten the chance to listen to those LSis.

[Midnite Mick]

Yeah, Best Buy doesn't carry Polk but their sister company Future Shop does. However, they are only in Canada. They only carry the RTi line though. It is really tough to demo them in store because very few high end places carry them and they need high end associated gear.

Mike

[pearsall001]

The Best Buy in my town is just putting in a Magnolia store now. It'll be interesting to see what they carry & how well the sales guys know their stuff. Half the time when I go into a store I wind up being the one telling the sales guys stuff that they should know. That's down right scary if you ask me cause what the hell do I know?

[cheddar]

The local Frys stores around here carry LSIs and they are the only local stores I've found that do including the few high end stores I've been to. Add to that a very liberal return policy and they also happen to be one of the best places to demo them.

Although the sales people do lose out on the hefty commission if they're returned. I demoed an mpa-2250 amp this way and they tried to call the guy who sold it to me to do the return. Guy was on his dayoff. Couldn't have been too happy when he got back. But he was giving me the hardsell, with the easy return policy when I bought it ;).

[scottvamp]

So Cheddar, you bought the MPA already knowing you were going to return it.
What did you think about it?

[cheddar]

Frys isn't hurting with all my computer cash they still have. But the ebay deals they had at the time were just too good to pay retail for the amp. I posted my impressions in this thread:

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40990

But bascially these are probably the best bang for the ebay buck amps you can buy when you can find them from a reputable seller. I mean $700-$800 for a new, factory sealed 3-channel 400wpc into 4ohm amp...:D.

[scottvamp]

Thanks Cheddar, I have never seen that thread - it must have disappeared really fast. With all the Monster bashing.....
I have 2 MPA-3250's myself.
So you returned it and got a better price on Ebay.....

[Joey_V]

My local best buy is putting up an in-store Magnolia. I hope hope hope that they dont suck with regards to setting up the speakers. Martin Logan will have their low end line there and I dont want ML to have a craptacular showing/audition because of incompetent workers and incompetent setups.

[Schwingding]

If you go into the local Magnolia (Polk's factory is maybe 10 miles away) and ask for Polk they'll tell you that the DefTech line is "timbre matched" better to Polk than anything else and sell you the corresponding DefTech (also located here in Baltimore).

I bought 4 DefTech cinema 800s and a matching Deftech center for the smaller family room setup. They are SURPRISINGLY nice speakers! I'm very impressed to be honest. I'm going to experiment by replacing them with a 15 year old pair of very expensive ADS bookshelves though, just for grins, but I do think the Deftechs will outperform them.

I've found the Magnolia guys here to be pretty nice, some of them well informed, some not so. Same with Tweeter, I was in there looking at furniture last week, one guy spent about 2 minutes with me. I wandered around and another salesman wound up talking to me for an hour about everything under the sun, wound up leaving with a new SACD/DVD-A player - went in for furniture! (good salesman eh!)

[wingnut4772]

Yeah, I went into Magnolia and asked them if they had a 12V trigger cable and they looked at me as if I was from Mars. They still don't know anything.

[AndyGwis]

I agree, I have found people at both Magnolia and Tweeter to be less than knowledgeable. If I ask about a speaker or component, all I ever get in return is "yeah, that's a good little _____."

I asked if the CSi3 would be a good match for my Monitor 60 / 30 setup, and they said, "yeah, it's a great little center." Asked if I would see a difference with a better sub than the freebie PSW10 I got, and he tried to show me to a $1K ML sub. I said "no thanks" and asked if the Mirage S12 onsale from $800 to $400 would do the trick, and he said "yeah, that's a good little sub," then looks at the tag and says, "look at that, it's on sale."

You think they would know if one of their "best selling subs" was onsale for 50%. . . but he didn't. Maybe they don't bother with the "low-end stuff," but I think they're just a little retarted and unmotivated.

You can, however, get great deals from those places, probably for the same reasons.