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I sympathize with LFS owners and employees because I understand that, for many of them, there's not a lot of money in it. I never forget that, and I really do sympathize with them as business people and am willing to pay more for items there than I can get mail order in order to build a relationship and get advice.
That said, you witnessed an employee of that store basically leading some people down the primrose path to a bad sale and a dead animal. You did the right thing. Ideally, you could have talked the salesperson into giving them better advice on things they COULD buy and when and setting up future sales and expectations. But it didn't go down like that.
BTW, with a month in the hobby I've aquired the bulk of my goods from a LFS and have probably overspent by 30% or so off of comparable best prices on line. I've gotten some personalized service out of it. But I'm afraid to say that some of it has been wrong or sloppy (selling me the wrong bulkheads for my tank and making me come back and explain it and then selling me different wrong bulkheads and then I figure it out before I get three blocks away and explain it to them again). And they have been pushing livestock on me as well, even though I know better from sites like this.
The latest disappointment was buying some snails from them and reading Dr. Ron's column about how "margarita snails" are really cold water snails that will die very prematurely in my tropical SW tank. So I'm about fed up with my LFS over these basically "little things" that show me a basic lack of attentiveness in spite of the fact I've dropped well over two grand there in just a few weeks.
Time to switch LFS's.
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