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7 Ways To Avoid Being Ripped Off

Guest post by: Tim Brownson

Article Overview: Marketers use all sorts of techniques such as loss aversion, social proof and anchoring to trap you into buying products and services you may not even want. However, if you are aware of the tactics they employ you are exponentially more likely to make an informed choice and not end up with buyers remorse. This post tells you about them and what you can do to make sure you don't fall victim to them.

7 Ways To Avoid Being Ripped Off

A few months ago I was pondering doing some advanced NLP and life coach training in Colorado. It appealed to me largely because two of the trainers leading the course were people I have the utmost respect for.

However, when I sat down to work out the cost of the training itself which was not unreasonable, flights, 6 nights hotel accommodation and the time I’d need to take off work, I realized it was going to be well over $5k.

Did I want it that badly I wondered?

The honest answer is probably not, because I let the early bird discount expire and did nothing about it for several weeks. Then shortly after somebody mentioned on Twitter it was sold out!

What?? Sold out?? But I hadn’t made my mind up yet, that wasn’t fair because I did really want to go, honest I did. In fact I couldn’t remember wanting something so badly in years.

I immediately logged on to the site to see, thank heavens, there was a life line. It said there was a good possibility they would be releasing a few more precious places later on and if I wanted to sign up to the waiting list and hand over $250 deposit, they would contact me soon.

I rummaged for my PayPal login details and clicked through to the payment page. I was about to hand over some of my hard earned when I stopped dead in my tracks.

What was I doing?

I was about to commit all that money as well as leaving my wife with two dogs to cope with for a week, on the basis of what? Half an hour previously I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do the training. Or at the very least, want to do it at that cost. What had happened in the meantime?

That ladies and gentlemen is what we call loss aversion.

Loss aversion is an incredibly powerful force and can make us act completely irrationally. The brain hates the signals it gets when it loses out. That is why the majority gamblers continue to gamble when they are losing. The pain of losing is worse than the pleasure of winning, which usually results in ‘chasing losses’ and a rapid downward spiral.

I didn’t almost sign up because I desperately wanted to do the training. I nearly signed up because my brain was screaming “Don’t lose out, I’ll hate you if you lose out!”

Have you ever visited one of those ugly long letter sales pages so beloved by many Internet marketers? You know the kind I mean, it takes you about 9 hours to read all the text. And by the time you get to the bottom you’ve gone temporarily blind after looking at all the yellow highlighter, tick marks and stupid cut out boxes that you can’t cut out .

Not only that, but you’re almost throwing up after looking at all the fake smiles and dodgy hairdos from the people from the 80’s offering testimonials and you’re wondering what you’ll do with the $219,768 worth of free product they are going to give you?

Have you ever wondered why the price of the product is always kept back until the very bottom? And more importantly, why they insist on telling you how much the product is ‘really’ worth (usually at least 37 times) prior to telling you how much they are actually going to take from you?

Then when you do finally find your way to the bottom of the page and realize that ebook on ‘How To Sell Ebooks To People About Selling Ebooks To People Who Want To Sell Ebooks’ wasn’t $147 after all, it was only $47.

Phew, better get it bought before they realize they’re giving this stuff away and put it back up to the ‘normal’ price.



That ladies and gentlemen is what we call anchoring.

Anchoring in all its guises is well known by marketers and as such it is used with sickening regularity. I’m sure as you read this you can think of many examples. The ticket price on a car, the brochure price on a Caribbean Cruise and the ‘Previously sold at’ stickers on clothing in Outlet Malls.

The problem is, like loss aversion, everybody is swayed by anchoring to a greater or lesser degree, irrespective of whether they know about it or not.

There is a reason sales companies use such tactics and it’s because they work. They aren’t really expecting people to pay full price, but they do want to condition them to believe that is the real value.

It’s the fine art of manipulation.

Having said that, if they convince you to buy a product or service that makes a huge positive difference in your life, aren’t their tactics retrospectively, justifiable? If I think I am a great Life Coach that can help people change their lives for the better, isn’t it my duty to demonstrate that confidence and do what I can to get people to hire me?

I guess that is a philosophical question for another day.

As well as the incredibly powerful methods above that almost all people fall victim to at some time or other, there are other even less ethical strategies.

There is something often called ‘The Velvet Rope Policy’ which involves pitching your product so high that peoples perceived value rises inline with your charges. If I charged $1,000 an hour for Life Coaching some people would want to hire me just because I charged that much. Their due diligence would go out of the window and they’d be thinking

“Wow this Tim Brownson charges 1,000 bucks an hour, he must be brilliant!”

Then there is social proof and our innate desire to base our decisions on what other people are doing. Just visit the Apple store when the next version of the iPhone is released or maybe check the follower count of some of the ‘Superstars of Twitter’ to get an idea of social proof in action. Everybody is doing it so it must be the right thing to do.

The thing is that some of these methods are used by ethical as well as unethical companies. In fact it is almost a prerequisite. I didn’t see the people I mentioned who are running the NLP training as unethical and trying to rip me off. I saw them as using some fancy pants sales techniques to fill their courses.

If you want to make more informed decisions and not end up signing up for an online course telling you how to sign up for online courses, buy an ebook on The Secret Behind The Secrets Secret or donating money to somebody that earns ten times more than you do then there are some guidelines you can follow the following 7 tips.

1. Ignore the free product. It’s usually (although to be fair, not always) garbage, and you probably won’t utilize it.
2. If you land on a sales page by accident, back out immediately, or prepare yourself to make an impulse buy.
3. If you are looking to buy a product or service, decide what it is worth to you before you go to the sales page and then don’t go higher than that price.
4. If you land on a long letter sales page with a view to buy, scroll to the bottom immediately and check the real cost. Then leave and think about it before you return to read the copy.
5. Ignore what 'everybody else' is doing because they probably won’t be sending you the money to cover your costs if you waste your money.
6. If its a large investment, do your due diligence and don’t rush into it, even if the offer of the century is about to close.
   
   
7. Don’t be afraid to ask for your money back if you are unhappy and that is an option.

Finally, if and you get great service and love what you bought, tell others.

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Article Tags: anchoring, life coach, long letter, loss aversion, ripoff, sales, social proof



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