The Cable Company “loans out” audio equipment - primarily interconnects, digital cables, and power cords, but also some headphones and headphone amps - charging you a lending fee of something like 10% of the retail price of whatever you borrow from them to try out at home. Those 10% lending fees are treated like store credits and get deducted from the price of anything you later buy from the Cable Company.

So if you borrow $20K worth of cables, you accumulate $2K in lending fees. If you buy something from the Cable Co, they will deduct $2K from the retail price of whatever you buy. But if you don’t buy anything because a lot of what they sell is absurdly overpriced snake oily cables, the Cable Company keeps all lending fees. It’s a savvy business model, because they incentivize you to buy from them and if you don’t buy anything, they still make a profit.