No, you miss the point. Have you owned a business? How is a retail hobby store different from any other business? It's not! Locally, we have a large hobby franchise which is of the most successful franchises ever, regardless of business type. They are listed in the top 5% of all franchises of any type. I know because corporate is located where I live and I deal with corporate on occasion. Believe it or not, one of the most important criteria they look for when interviewing potential new store owners is that they should NOT have any prior involvement in the hobby. This blows a lot of hobbyist' away... why would they do such a thing? Because it is a business, not a club house with parts on the wall. It is a hobby to you, it is a BUSINESS to them. If the hobby store wishes to stay in business they need to make good business decisions, and good business decision may be mutually exclusive of what a hobbyist wants. However, I can say that I have NEVER been treated poorly at the franchise's store. Sure, sometimes they don't know an answer, but they were always polite.

There is generally no room for arrogance when dealing with customers... no argument here. Beginners don't ask difficult questions, but they may ask a lot of questions that take time to answer. Nearly all the complaints here revolve around beginners getting some attitude when they ask beginner type questions. I can envision a beginner in a LHS asking easily asking hours worth of questions. Even if the LHS sells them something, they probably lost money in the process because they spent oneplus-man hours on one sale. Now, if we are talking high ticket items, like a $40K car, sure, this can be justified. For all that work for a $300 RTF trainer? Just look at bobs_202 post. He goes to his LHS, looking for answers and maybe to buy. He gets PO'd so he buys on Ebay instead... so how many hobby answers did Ebay give him? Like I said in my previous post. Everyone say's service is top priority, but when it comes right down to it, cost is king.

I still think it would be MUCH more useful to list hobby sources that offer good services to new pilots as opposed to just listing one's people are PO'd with. Who cares if one person had a bad experience. I want to know the business where 95% had a good experience.

Cheers.