Suckers Welcome
Chapter 12: The anatomy of a scam
Dear friends,
Today’s chapter of User Zero is about avoiding the con. I got back from Las Vegas last night. I managed to avoid being seduced by almost everything begging for my money. Except for The Sphere. Incredible. I saw Postards from Earth and it was the most immersive experience I’ve ever had. Realer than real, it is what I hope VR can someday achieve. Words don’t do it justice so try to see it if you can. The atrium was also impressive. If you’ve seen my hologram art, you’ll understand why the digital projections appealed to me more than talking robot. I made a 3 min video of the pre-movie activities if you want to see more.
Stay creative. Your friend,
Ade
“The elementary principle of all deception is to attract the enemy’s attention to what you wish him to see and to distract his attention from what you do not wish him to see.” — Buckminster Fuller
I didn’t look like a sucker, at least not any more than any other victim who visits a car dealership. And yet a pristine Honda Accord appeared just as I began talking to the used car salesman. As I introduced myself, the Accord slipped into the parking spot next to us and a man got out and opened the trunk. He laughed and seemed to be in awe of the vehicle. Finally, he said, “Sorry to interrupt you guys, but John you have to take a look at this. I just got this trade-in from that older couple I was helping. I don’t even think we need to do a detail on it because it looks like it never left their garage.”
The salesman turned to me and said, “This might be your lucky day. Didn’t you just say you were looking to replace your old Accord?” To which the salesman’s partner responded, “But John, I haven’t even put this car into our system yet. It will be a week before it is ready to sell.” Disappointed, John replied, “A week? Adrian is the perfect match for this vehicle. We don’t want him to go home empty handed. Surely we can make an exception.”
It took me longer than I care to admit to realize that the drama that had just played out in front or me was a well-rehearsed scheme. I managed to escape that dealership with the shirt still on my back, but had I not recognized the charade I easily could have bought that lemon. How many victims weren’t so lucky?
We think we go into a car dealership rationally. We do up-front research. We have a range of vehicles we would consider at various price ranges. We might even have picked the exact vehicle from the website to test drive. And yet when we arrive at the dealership our plans dissolve.
Cons work because they interact with our emotional brain, not our logical mind. In effect, the conman isn’t talking to us, he is communicating directly with our subconscious. A good conman, salesman, marketer, or any job that requires persuasion, is able to play us like an instrument. Take the Honda scam I just described. It seems like a probable series of events, but if you understand human motivation, you see how the scam is perfectly engineered to play with emotions.
First, notice how the salesman injected luck into the situation. I was looking for a bargain and lo and behold the perfect car appears. I thought, “This must be my lucky day,” oblivious to the manufactured scenario. Second, the salesman activated my fear of missing out. “We don’t want him to leave empty-handed.” Next he made me think past the sale when he caused me to imagine a week without a car. Then the salesman created confidence in how I perceived the quality of the product. The picture of an elderly couple who rarely let the car out of their garage reduced anxiety about whether the car was abused.
We hadn’t even discussed a price and yet the sale was all but complete. This persuasion cocktail armed me with all the ammunition I needed to convince myself that I should purchase the vehicle.
Many people dread buying cars because we sense a scam. From the moment we step on a lot, we feel the eyes measuring us from behind dark glass. It doesn’t take long, just a glance is all the salesman needs to profile you. He makes a rough sketch and begins going to work. Age, sex, size, race, the obvious factors that can never be spoken but are always at play, the stereotype is a silhouette that he will fill with additional details.
As you come into full view, the salesman notes your clothes, your hair, the way you walk, your posture. Each detail gets cross-referenced in his mind, your profile gets updated, rearranged, and sorted. He scans for nervousness in your voice, notes the pressure of your handshake, feels the moisture of your palm.
Calculations are spinning in his mind. His inventory of cars are matched against your profile and evaluated for maximum profit. He knows the car he will sell you, the strategy he will use to get you into that car, and how much he will offer you for the car you drove there in. His approach can change with new information, but his plan has already been put in motion when he greets you with, “I see you are driving an Accord. Great car.”
Your clothing, income, debt ratio, risk tolerance, addictions, discretionary spending, lifestyle, family structure — every part of your identity is being scanned, noted, and measured. Contradictions are flagged for further investigation. Later, he will casually ask, “That Nutrien logo on your shirt, is that where you work? What do you do?” Conversation that sounds like small talk effortlessly extract rich details that can be used against you.
You agree to test-drive a car, he asks for your drivers license and hands you the keys. Your license gets photocopied and the dealer now has your name, address, and license number. With this information, a collection of hard data can be layered on top of the soft profile the salesman has been compiling. What hope do you have of getting an honest deal?
I once spent an afternoon at a car dealership test driving minivans. I negotiated what I thought was a good price. They let me drive it home to show my wife. While at home, I decided to look at the dealer’s website where I saw they were advertising the exact same Odyssey for cheaper than the price I had haggled. I was enraged, but had I not caught them in their scam, I would have purchased the vehicle thinking I was a skilled negotiator. The story we tell ourselves is more important than reality. It hurts to entertain the possibility of being victims of a scam.
Despite technical advancements, car sales have evolved little over the decades. Why change when the tactics work? The hard sell works because we don’t like the discomfort that comes with pushing back. We aren’t good at complex math, so we are fooled when the conversation switches from total price to monthly payment. We think we are getting a deal on the trade-in but miss the inflated price of the car we are purchasing.
Consumers are always at a disadvantage because the dealer is armed with hidden information. They know the true condition of the car, the market, inventory levels, lot space, and how many times the car has been viewed on their website. They have more time than you and have no qualms with letting you sit in the waiting room questioning your life choices.
In The Confidence Game, Why We Fall for it … Every Time, Maria Konnikova explains how we can protect ourselves from getting conned. She says,
“A large part of resistance, of making sure you don’t start getting pulled in, is to know yourself well enough to recognize and control your emotional reactions. What kinds of things provoke what kinds of responses in me—and can I see it happening early enough to resist it, by staying grounded in details and logic?”
As user zero, you are learning to hone your skills of observation. That is partly external, being able to understand the mechanisms of our external environments. It is also internal, being sensitive to the emotional responses bubbling inside us. The uneasy feeling we sense at a car dealership is worth noting and so is the thrill we feel when a too-good-to-be-true deal appears in front of us. These are clues that we should slow down, search for evidence, and intervene with caution before our emotions lead us to make poor decisions.
Believe it or not, the variables at play at a car dealership are more transparent than other places where money is exchanged. Before I leave the car buying arena, however, I feel it is my duty to offer some tips for anyone who doesn’t want to be fleeced the next time you buy a car.
Here is some advice. Put in the work to truly know the value of the car that you are purchasing. Without this single piece of information you are helpless. If you are buying used, insist that you have the car evaluated by a third party. If you don’t know a mechanic, most car shops will do an inspection for less than $50. The peace-of-mind this exercise delivers is well worth the cost. If the seller won’t agree to this condition, that is a sign that the car probably has a hidden flaw.
Don’t rush, and be willing to walk away from the deal. In fact, if you don’t make a counter offer and leave the dealership at least once, there is a good chance you aren't getting as good of a deal as you think. I received this advice from a friend who worked at a car dealership. He explained that while we think it is rude to walk away, what your willingness to withstand the negotiation is actually telling the salesman is that there is still room for him to manipulate the terms to his benefit.
Try to avoid financing, even if it means buying less of a car than what you desire. Be skeptical of “no haggle” claims. As appealing as it may sound, companies claiming that they have “reinvented the car-buying experience” are looking for suckers. Don’t be one.
I use the example of selling cars because the core variables (product and price) are out in the open. Most people walk onto a car dealership expecting a certain level of shenanigans. It is the places where we don’t expect to be manipulated that we are most vulnerable. The problem is that getting ripped off by a car salesman is the visible side of the spectrum. Most of our money is parted with on the opaque side of things.
When a car salesman switches the conversation from a question of total cost to a review of how much you can afford per month, he is shifting the variables to shaky territory of relativity. Not only are monthly numbers harder to calculate, the costs are obscured by interest rates, timelines, leasing loopholes, and hidden fees. Something similar happens with software because the values represented are murky.
The value exchange is opaque, especially when the services we use are free. The information a car salesman can glean from a photocopy of your drivers license is minuscule compared to the treasure trove of information an app can harvest from you. If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. As a user you have invisible value.
The 30% royalty Apple skims off the top of every app you purchase is not a secret, but there is an additional invisible cost that is harder to detect. The value you are giving to the software developer is more than the $0.99 you paid for the app. Free apps recoup their losses partly with advertisements, but the real value is the ability to monitor and measure your usage. Selling ads may be a sleazy way to fund a corporation, but data monetization is even worse. It is impossible to know the extent to which your data is being used, but we can make some assumptions. There are profiles of you that detail every transaction you have online. Your clicks are known, your preferences, and the time and place where you use your devices. Amazon’s product recommendation engine is so smart that it can push pregnancy related products to teenagers before their parents, and often even before the teens themselves know that they are pregnant.
As consumers we take our freedom to buy what we want seriously. The idea that we can be manipulated into parting with our money, whether it is through car salesmanship, through undetectable software interventions, or through good old-fashioned advertising – we want to believe that we are in control of our purchases. Let’s hold onto the car-buying topic one more chapter as we try to unravel the mystery of why every car on the road seems to be a clone.
Thanks for reading. I am releasing User Zero one chapter at a time on Substack for free to all subscribers. Physical copies are available from Amazon. Stay creative.