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There's nothing an algorithm can do against disciplined, intentional engagement. If you know which car you want to buy it doesn't matter what the salesman has

There's nothing an algorithm can do against disciplined, intentional engagement. If you know which car you want to buy it doesn't matter what the salesman has to say.

vntok 1y ago
What car you want to buy is just one tiny part of the transaction. The salesman can and will manipulate you on everything else from price to warranty, from payment schedule to cross-sale rebates, from maintenance subscription to registration fees, from additional options to spare tires.
- afiodorov 1y ago
  You're right, they can try to manipulate you on a thousand tiny things. My counter-argument is that at a certain point, it's not worth the mental energy to fight over what amounts to pennies on the dollar. Anecdotally, when I bought my car recently, they forgot to even offer me the extended warranty they'd planned to push. I find it funny to think it was so minor, even they forgot to care.
  - ctxc 1y ago
    Tangential, but I think most extended warranties I've noticed are beneficial. Even last month I was kicking myself for forgetting to extend a 2 year warranty which costs 1/4th the one time repair cost I had to cough up.
    - blincoln 1y ago
      Are you sure the extended warranty would have covered it? I paid for an extended warranty on the first car I ever bought. Turned out it didn't cover any of the things the salesperson cited as good reasons to pay for it, and to maintain the warranty, I'd have to pay the dealer for all maintenance - even oil changes. That car never needed any repairs, but seeing the list of exclusions convinced me to never pay for an extended warranty again.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      > but I think most extended warranties I've noticed are beneficial. If this were true, it would result in a loss for the issuer of the warranty.
      - _9ptr 1y ago
        That's not how insurance works
        lotsofpulp 1y ago
        I meant financially benefit. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44490667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44490667 Insurance seller has to earn at least enough for payroll, so at least some of the premiums go towards that instead of any money received from claims. Investment earnings cancel out because both the insurance buyer and insurance seller have access to same returns via broad market index funds. I.e. you can self insure and get the same returns on your savings that the insurance seller is going to get if you gave them a premium.
      - vntok 1y ago
        Interesting. Can you expand a bit on what your reasoning is so we can understand where you come from?
        lotsofpulp 1y ago
        I guess I should have specified financial benefit. You wouldn't pay someone else to insure a common vegetable, because it is so low cost that if it turned out to be bad, you would just buy another one (or have bought extra as your insurance). When you buy from Walmart/Target/Amazon/Best Buy, they will try to sell you insurance for a $30 toaster or other cheap appliance. Again, most people will not buy this because they will believe the appliance will work sufficiently long or that the warranty process will be too time consuming, or otherwise decide that just quickly replacing the cheap appliance with another is the preferred way to insure it. The insurance seller is a business and has to earn more than what they pay out for claims (or at least to make payroll if it is a mutual insurance company). Otherwise, they are going to lose money over time and go out of business. If you financially benefit from it, then you are either lucky, or had an information edge over the insurance underwriter. Of course, if you get peace of mind from buying insurance, and count that as a benefit, then most insurance is beneficial in that case.
  - alganet 1y ago
    > it's not worth the mental energy to fight over what amounts to pennies Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe I see it challenging profiling algorithms as entertainment.
latexr 1y ago
> If you know which car you want to buy it doesn't matter what the salesman has to say. Sure it does. The salesman may have information you were not aware of. They could even tell you something which satisfies your needs better and is cheaper. Not all salesman are out to screw you, some really care about a happy customer. I’m reminded of an old Hypercritical episode. If you ever heard John Siracusa, you know he does his research and knows what he wants. Yet when it came time buy a TV, which he had intensively researched, the salesman mentioned plasma and how the tech had improved and it threw a wrench in Siracusa’s whole decision. https://overcast.fm/+AA3EXrnIDrA/1:23:08 https://overcast.fm/+AA3EXrnIDrA/1:23:08
- denkmoon 1y ago
  How intensively can you possibly have researched if a salesman mentioning an entire category of display technology is a curve ball for you.
  - latexr 1y ago
    > How intensively can you possibly have researched Listen to it. Start way before the given timestamp.
- const_cast 1y ago
  The heuristic is that pretty much anyone who is trying to sell you something is out to screw you. They are probably lying, and they are probably trying to get a quick buck from people who don't know better. And when I say anyone, I mean anyone. Youtubers, anyone on TikTok who links anything, advertisements on the web, billboards. It's not 100% but if you follow the heuristic you save a lot of money and generally have higher quality goods in your life. The reason we got into this mess is because advertising on the internet broke all the rules. Now lying is de-facto allowed. So then everyone else followed suit to compete. If your competitors are lying, you cannot afford not to lie. So now all advertisement and sales are compromised and should not be trusted. Even large, previously trusted corporations are running scams in America. Professionals making six figures are acting as con artists. It's unbelievable how fast the situation has deteriorated.
makeitdouble 1y ago
The salesman can cut the car you want from your buying options, or stick conditions on it that will make up for the difference with the other models. That's what we're seeing with Youtube for instance: your choice is to pay Youtube's price for Premium (litteraly paying to not get bullied), sit through all the ads in the world, or get three strikes after playing the ad-blocking cat and mouse game for long enough. Of course you're still free to go somewhere else, in a world where even public guides and presentations will often be pushed on youtube only, to alleviate for the bandwidth costs on standard web services.
- jen20 1y ago
  > The salesman can cut the car you want from your buying options, or stick conditions on it that will make up for the difference with the other models. My favourite approach to this is to write an email to all dealerships within the radius I’m willing to go, explaining what I want, then “publicly” make them bid for my business in a thread with their peers. I’ve had it work several times now.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  > get three strikes after playing the ad-blocking cat and mouse game for long enough I've never encountered this. What is it?
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14129599?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14129599?hl=en Depending on when you look at it, it might be worked around or fully enforced again, it comes and go, but at least Youtube doesn't seem willing to give up that stance entirely.
  - bmicraft 1y ago
    People using subpar ad blockers mostly, or more than one.
    - makeitdouble 1y ago
alganet 1y ago
I wonder if there are other kinds of profiling algorithms not related to sales.
- felurx 1y ago
  Depends on your definition of sale, but influencing elections comes to mind.

There's nothing an algorithm can do against disciplined, intentional engagement. If you know which car you want to buy it doesn't matter what the salesman has to say.

vntok 1y ago

What car you want to buy is just one tiny part of the transaction. The salesman can and will manipulate you on everything else from price to warranty, from payment schedule to cross-sale rebates, from maintenance subscription to registration fees, from additional options to spare tires.

afiodorov 1y ago
You're right, they can try to manipulate you on a thousand tiny things. My counter-argument is that at a certain point, it's not worth the mental energy to fight over what amounts to pennies on the dollar. Anecdotally, when I bought my car recently, they forgot to even offer me the extended warranty they'd planned to push. I find it funny to think it was so minor, even they forgot to care.
- ctxc 1y ago
  Tangential, but I think most extended warranties I've noticed are beneficial. Even last month I was kicking myself for forgetting to extend a 2 year warranty which costs 1/4th the one time repair cost I had to cough up.
  - blincoln 1y ago
    Are you sure the extended warranty would have covered it? I paid for an extended warranty on the first car I ever bought. Turned out it didn't cover any of the things the salesperson cited as good reasons to pay for it, and to maintain the warranty, I'd have to pay the dealer for all maintenance - even oil changes. That car never needed any repairs, but seeing the list of exclusions convinced me to never pay for an extended warranty again.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    > but I think most extended warranties I've noticed are beneficial. If this were true, it would result in a loss for the issuer of the warranty.
    - _9ptr 1y ago
      That's not how insurance works
      - lotsofpulp 1y ago
        I meant financially benefit. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44490667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44490667 Insurance seller has to earn at least enough for payroll, so at least some of the premiums go towards that instead of any money received from claims. Investment earnings cancel out because both the insurance buyer and insurance seller have access to same returns via broad market index funds. I.e. you can self insure and get the same returns on your savings that the insurance seller is going to get if you gave them a premium.
    - vntok 1y ago
      Interesting. Can you expand a bit on what your reasoning is so we can understand where you come from?
      - lotsofpulp 1y ago
        I guess I should have specified financial benefit. You wouldn't pay someone else to insure a common vegetable, because it is so low cost that if it turned out to be bad, you would just buy another one (or have bought extra as your insurance). When you buy from Walmart/Target/Amazon/Best Buy, they will try to sell you insurance for a $30 toaster or other cheap appliance. Again, most people will not buy this because they will believe the appliance will work sufficiently long or that the warranty process will be too time consuming, or otherwise decide that just quickly replacing the cheap appliance with another is the preferred way to insure it. The insurance seller is a business and has to earn more than what they pay out for claims (or at least to make payroll if it is a mutual insurance company). Otherwise, they are going to lose money over time and go out of business. If you financially benefit from it, then you are either lucky, or had an information edge over the insurance underwriter. Of course, if you get peace of mind from buying insurance, and count that as a benefit, then most insurance is beneficial in that case.
- alganet 1y ago
  > it's not worth the mental energy to fight over what amounts to pennies Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe I see it challenging profiling algorithms as entertainment.

latexr 1y ago

> If you know which car you want to buy it doesn't matter what the salesman has to say. Sure it does. The salesman may have information you were not aware of. They could even tell you something which satisfies your needs better and is cheaper. Not all salesman are out to screw you, some really care about a happy customer. I’m reminded of an old Hypercritical episode. If you ever heard John Siracusa, you know he does his research and knows what he wants. Yet when it came time buy a TV, which he had intensively researched, the salesman mentioned plasma and how the tech had improved and it threw a wrench in Siracusa’s whole decision. https://overcast.fm/+AA3EXrnIDrA/1:23:08 https://overcast.fm/+AA3EXrnIDrA/1:23:08

denkmoon 1y ago
How intensively can you possibly have researched if a salesman mentioning an entire category of display technology is a curve ball for you.
- latexr 1y ago
  > How intensively can you possibly have researched Listen to it. Start way before the given timestamp.
const_cast 1y ago
The heuristic is that pretty much anyone who is trying to sell you something is out to screw you. They are probably lying, and they are probably trying to get a quick buck from people who don't know better. And when I say anyone, I mean anyone. Youtubers, anyone on TikTok who links anything, advertisements on the web, billboards. It's not 100% but if you follow the heuristic you save a lot of money and generally have higher quality goods in your life. The reason we got into this mess is because advertising on the internet broke all the rules. Now lying is de-facto allowed. So then everyone else followed suit to compete. If your competitors are lying, you cannot afford not to lie. So now all advertisement and sales are compromised and should not be trusted. Even large, previously trusted corporations are running scams in America. Professionals making six figures are acting as con artists. It's unbelievable how fast the situation has deteriorated.

makeitdouble 1y ago

The salesman can cut the car you want from your buying options, or stick conditions on it that will make up for the difference with the other models. That's what we're seeing with Youtube for instance: your choice is to pay Youtube's price for Premium (litteraly paying to not get bullied), sit through all the ads in the world, or get three strikes after playing the ad-blocking cat and mouse game for long enough. Of course you're still free to go somewhere else, in a world where even public guides and presentations will often be pushed on youtube only, to alleviate for the bandwidth costs on standard web services.

jen20 1y ago
> The salesman can cut the car you want from your buying options, or stick conditions on it that will make up for the difference with the other models. My favourite approach to this is to write an email to all dealerships within the radius I’m willing to go, explaining what I want, then “publicly” make them bid for my business in a thread with their peers. I’ve had it work several times now.
fc417fc802 1y ago
> get three strikes after playing the ad-blocking cat and mouse game for long enough I've never encountered this. What is it?
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14129599?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14129599?hl=en Depending on when you look at it, it might be worked around or fully enforced again, it comes and go, but at least Youtube doesn't seem willing to give up that stance entirely.
- bmicraft 1y ago
  People using subpar ad blockers mostly, or more than one.
  - makeitdouble 1y ago

alganet 1y ago

I wonder if there are other kinds of profiling algorithms not related to sales.

felurx 1y ago
Depends on your definition of sale, but influencing elections comes to mind.