Do you scare wood stove dealers?

One of my good friends owns a stove shop, many times we discuss different stoves and how they burn.

Around here it's the same, they don't know jack. Like I've said before, about the same type of people selling futons and kitchenettes.

I sold stoves to a few Hearth.com members. Never scared me, in fact..they were very easy customers to deal with. They knew exactly what they wanted, didn't need to be sold and I could feel good about them using the product as it should be used. I was lucky not to have them start asking super hard questions!

there is a fine line there, I can tell when people actually know what they are talking about which is fine. Then you have parrots that repeat what they have read on the internet and they can be annoying. you know what is on the internet is always true, I am a French model WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

The thing is when talking quality you want to talk to people that use and maintain a product, not people that sell a product. Would you trust a car salesman to tell you that a certain car they offer spends a lot of time in the shop getting repaired? When I was a painter, I hated when home owners insisted on supplying their own paint because their 'buddy' owns a paint store. And there would sit 5 gallons of Kyanize or Glidden or some other garbage that I'd be stuck using instead of a real paint that would deliver long lasting quality results.....

My limited experience is that stove shop guys sometimes enjoy talking to someone who actually knows how secondary burn technology works. But try telling them a cat stove is a good or maybe even (horrors!) better technology, and yes, they will likely get defensive... since few if any of them sell cats, an ingrained part of their pitch is to dismiss cats as obsolete or inferior or high-maintenance.

The problem is that there are salesmen and then there are knowledgeable folks and frequently they are not one in the same. A good stove guy will sell you need while a salesman will gladly sell you what you don't need. I have met some folks in past that can do both, if a sucker walks in the door they go for the commission but if the customer knows what they are talking about the salesmen can shift gears and talk tech. Unfortunately a small wood stove dealer is not going to be able to pay a good salesman long, if they are any good they will move on in a few months.

I always get worried when I see a place that sells swimming pools in the summer and woodstoves in the winter. Not much overlap.