It amazes me how small, simple con tactics seem to always work. Even people who are normally critical thinkers can get duped as they find themselves in situations were it appears their skills are not needed. More than anything it is an irritation for me. What better place to find these con tactics than a car dealership.
Car Dealerships
Car salesman and dealership personnel constantly implement con tactics, which is the main reason I hate car shopping. There is way too many of these to get in to in any one post, especially in the case of car salesman. So I will just explain one which I call the Low Expectation Con. With every con their is a goal. This goal is obvious when it comes to car salesman but what about other dealership personnel? Often dealerships are ranked or punished based on customer feedback. The car dealership where I bought my car lives and dies by their customer satisfaction surveys. These surveys are taken from parties external to the dealership and happen after you buy or get your car serviced. They want people to respond with all “excellent” on their survey. This way they don’t get punished by the manufacturer and may receive other benefits as well.
The Art of Low Expectations
Recently I had the service department at my car dealership try to work me. I had a very small warranty repair that needed to happen on my car. There was a small piece of plastic molding that had broken around the seatbelt in the back seat. This was a very minor repair. The service department had ordered this part for me and wanted to make an appointment with me to get it replaced. Several times we tried but I was traveling so it was determined that it would just get replaced on my next vehicle service.
When I called to set up my service I mentioned that I needed to get that piece replaced as well and the part had already been ordered. The service manager told me that the person I was dealing with was no longer there and that the part had been sent back. At this point he noticeably upset me. I told him that I had been working on making an appointment with them for over 2 months and now they just sent it back. I told him the scenario didn’t make sense because it wasn’t like the issue was just going to go away. He told me they could reorder it and it would take a couple of weeks. At this point he lowered my expectations.
Now at the point where someone lowers your expectations it can be extremely difficult if not impossible to determine if they are pulling a con on you. There is a lot of incompetence out there 
Sometimes all you can do is take the situation for what it appears to be.
I took my car in for its service and came back two hours later. When I returned the service manager was going over the service and mentioned to me that they had fixed the warranty issue. His exact words were, “Don’t ask me how we did it, but we did it”. At this point I get a bit frustrated because one of two things just happened. Either they had the part the whole time and didn’t tell me or they took it off of another car and just ordered another one for that car. I am leaning toward the first scenario.
They deliberately lowered my expectations so that it would appear they came through for me. This was supposedly done to make me happy? With the addition of his “don’t ask me how I did it” comment it was supposed to reinforce this in my head. They wanted me to think they went above and beyond the call of duty for me. All of this was done so I would give them an “Excellent” on their survey when I was called.
Low Expectation Con
I am not sure if there is a technical term for this con, but I refer to this tactic as the Low Expectation Con and for multiple reasons it works. I have given some thought to why this con seems to work most of the time and I came up with several reasons, when put together, give this con a high success rate.
We expect failure. In modern society we have become acclimatized to break downs in the systems and processes around us. We have all witnessed errors with everything from the people we deal with to the computers we use. With our experience dealing with errors we have come to expect a certain amount of failure.
As modern humans we tend to live in the now. We try not to live too much in the past. This may make emotions we are feeling now override the emotions we felt two hours ago. You may have heard the old adage “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission”, this functions on the same principle. As in the now individuals we tend to trade the happiness of apparently getting what we wanted for the frustration at the incompetence we felt just a short time ago.
We may have used a similar technique on people ourselves. If you have ever said, “Well let’s not tell them yet, I don’t want them to get too excited.”, then you may have used a similar technique yourself.
The Realization
If / when someone realizes they have had this con pulled on them they usually get much more mad than they were in the first place. Just think about it someone made you mad or upset so they could make you feel better in the end. This was all done so that someone else could get what they wanted. All of the actions that were taken were done in order to influence you in to taking some action or feeling a certain way.
The best thing you can do is try and identify situations where this tactic is being used and not take the action the individual wants. You can also just quit doing business with the organization employing these tactics. Sometimes telling people just to level with you works as well. It all depends on the situation and the people you are dealing with.
There are little cons that happen everyday. Can you spot them?
