Forget The Four-Square…

People tend to avoid painful things: Root canals…Tax audits…Birthday parties with clowns.

Add the traditional car dealer’s Four-Square worksheet to your personal list of things to avoid.

What’s the Four-Square? This is the car dealership’s mind-control tool. Car salesman are “encouraged” to use the Four-Square worksheet to completely scramble your cognitive reasoning and negotiating abilities. If you have ever been subjected to the Four-Square, you already know it’s crippling power.

Here’s the deal…before you begin price negotiations, your salesperson will fumble through an unorganized mess and produce an innocent looking piece of paper. On it, a simple T-grid, creating “Four Squares.” Easy enough? Hardly.

The salesman adds the vehicle info to the sheet: year, make, model & vague customer info. His handwriting puts your Doctor’s to shame.

Next, he makes a simply absurd request: “Please initial here - this indicates that you’ll buy today if we can see eye to eye on the final price.” [Huh?]

Just about everyone complies and add their initials. You get the same feeling when you buy a scratch-off lottery ticket. You hope to get lucky, but deep down you know the effort will be wasted.

By getting your initials, the salesperson now has permission to enter the office reserved only for managers. They perk up knowing someone is in the cross-hairs.  Managers determine the price you’ll pay; the salesperson is merely a paper courier.

After a few minutes your salesperson returns with a few numbers, words and symbols strategically arraigned on the grid. Looks like a math test that you didn’t prepare for in college. Don’t try to grasp its complexities. Google’s sophisticated search algorithm is still stumped by the Four Square.

Then, you’ll get a quick breakdown. It begins with how much they’ll give you for your trade. And no, you probably won’t be pleased with the number.

Oblivious to your visible agitation, the salesperson shoots to the top right square and tells you the price of the car.  Suddenly, you’re distracted enough to forget about the fact you were getting heated over the price of your trade. You may try to do simple math - subtracting your trade from the price quoted - but confusion sets in and your math skills are sub-par at best.

Suddenly, the next square’s value is thrown at you. This is your down payment. It’ll probably be somewhere between how much you paid for your first car and the federal deficit. You try to maintain composure. Before the impact of that number sets in, the last square caps it all off. Your monthly payment. This is also the exact moment when blood begins to boil.

Every once in a (great) while, the salesperson gets an easy layup and the customer agrees.

This is where the shell game begins. You’ll tell him you don’t like what you see in either the down payment or your trade-in value. They may try to convince you why your used car is worth less than a rickshaw or try to diffuse the down payment objection.

Next question: What down payment are you more comfortable with? He’ll cross out the original number and replace it with your new down payment. For good measure, he might sympathize with you and tell you something like how his managers always pad the numbers to boost their bonus and they can afford to come down a bit. Now he’s on your side.

But, he warns how a lower down payment could increase the monthly payment. Crap, didn’t see that coming. He may have a solution though. Maybe he can persuade his manager to give you more for your trade. Yes, there is hope. (No, there isn’t)

Amid the confusion, he may ask you for the down payment check. You’re told this shows the managers your commitment and helps them make a better deal.  He’ll also ask you to initial the work sheet agreeing to the deal. More control tactics.

TIP: Stayed focused on the price of the car. That’s all that matters.

They will tell you the down payment is good. But, the monthly payment is an issue. If the trade-in value is still a deal breaker, quickly drawn X’s, smiley-faces and dark, thick ink will mask the extra changes made to the purchase price, down payment and/or the monthly payment.

TIP: Stay alert for the simple questions they lob out - they want to get as many YES answers out of you as possible.

The negotiations continue until they either break you down into agreement or you walk out in frustration.

How do you avoid the Four Square? Remove one or more of the elements used to confuse you; tell them you don’t have a trade-in or tell them you don’t need financing. Tell them you are only interested in the vehicle’s final price. You may not avoid all of the negotiations but you might be lucky enough to avoid the wrath of the Four Square worksheet.

The best solution? A used cars dealership offering low/discount fixed pricing with no haggling required to get the best deal possible.

Have you ever experienced the Four Square? Share your story…

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