saying that someone was really interested in it, but that the price was
a little too high. Would I be willing to drop my price by two hundred
dollars to sell the car? Convinced that they had my interests at heart, I
agreed. The next day they called back to say the the buyer’s financing
had fallen through and that he couldn’t buy the car. In the next two
weeks, I got two more calls from the dealership, each asking me to drop
my price two hundred dollars to seal a sale to some customer. Both
times I OK’d it because I still believed they were trustworthy. But each
time, the alleged deal fell through. I was suspicious enough to call a
friend whose family was in the car business. He said this was an old
trick designed to get sellers like me to reduce their asking prices to super
low levels, giving the dealership big profits when they finally sold the
car.
“So, I went over there and took my car. As I was leaving, they were
still trying to persuade me to let them keep it because they had a ‘hot
prospect’ who they were sure would buy it if I’d only knock off another
two hundred dollars.”
Once again in a Reader’s Report we can see the influence of the contrast
principle combining with the principle of primary interest. In this case,
after the thirty-five-hundred-dollar figure was set, each
two-hundred-dollar nick seemed small by comparison.
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 177