I'm not interested in looking at inkjet papers, since I don't care about inkjet printing tbh at the moment. There is nothing they can do for you about the price, it's not a customer service issue at all. It's a distributor issue. The same reason why a roll of Fujichrome Provia 400X in 35mm costs $42. Because we get charged a certain amount to buy it from the distributor.
A large printer like that is not something that is bought often (it's very low volume, I dont know if I'm allowed to specifically say the number we've sold this year or in total, but it's not many at all), so we don't have a demo model for anyone to become familiar with, nor do we keep them in stock, they are order items.
There is no provided information or training, as it's the type of item people would specifically ask for, not browse the show room floor for. So I don't know how you expect someone to be knowledgeable out of experience with this, the only thing they can do for you is read out information from forums and reviews googling about it which you can do for yourself which is more in depth than the manufacturers web page on it.
I once contacted Ilford some time ago about importing materials directly from them, only to be told I cannot because Australia already has a distributor.
There are issues with importing (and we generally have to import overseas retail, rather than from a distributor or directly because they just wall us out) some things instead of buying from that a distributor, such as above, Fujichrome film, will lead to potentially angry distributor cutting us off, when that distributor has a lot of other things (such as the chems for our lab that we need, and many other things).
**Now consider that Ilford's distributor in Australia is CR Kennedys, no one is going to risk importing Ilford instead of buying from them (Such as your inkjet paper being too expensive, or Ilford film being more than 2x the price as overseas), as it's not just Ilford products, it's lenses, warranties, etc. Any large photo business who gets black listed and walled out from CR Kennedys is up a proverbial creek.
Often times the distributor can't do anything about prices either and actually attempt to be somewhat competitive instead of massively gouged, unless something is owned, which there is an example of a brand being able to be competitive in Australia on pricing that we carry.
There is another example of a brand that is sold much cheaper (lower than our cost price - they buy from the same distributor) in a different kind of shop around the corner, because that brand says prices for one type of store are higher than another, so we don't carry them, they refuse to play ball.
Other things, when a distributor actually helps us, is where staff can be helpful, Tamron comes in often and brings in stuff for us to try and brief on it's products etc. I tried the new 70-200/2.8 VC and it's really great.
Everything else is made from personal experience.
So I don't know how you can possibly say from an interaction with a single staff member over a single niche product that's not practical for anyone to be knowledgeable about unless they actually own one or get the chance to use one and call them unknowledgeable and yet apply that to everyone/the whole place and then say it's a waste of time asking a question at vanbar.
