Fredintexas

The training seminars also taught salespeople to focus customers on monthly payments and avoid discussing or disclosing the cap costs of vehicles. Numerous strategies and tricks were taught that were designed to conceal the actual prices that customers were paying.
For example, page 3-30 of the 1989 manual says, “Customer Response: What are you charging me for the car?” It then explains how to deceive the customer into thinking the deal has a big discount: “Salesperson: Mr. Customer, are asking me what kind of a discount you are getting?” Salespeople were then taught a deceptive strategy to add up the monthly payments (and any down payment) on the lease, comparing the total with the MSRP to trick customers into thinking that the price was a lot lower than suggested retail.
No mention was made of revealing the actual price (or cap cost). And that was important, since dealers and salespeople were also taught how to cheat customers on discounts and secretly increase the prices of cars.

Ford’s lease training included instruction on how to misquote monthly payments to cheat customers out of negotiated discounts. If a customer said that he would not OK a deal unless they gave him a price discount on a car, they were taught how to trick him into believing that a smaller payment reduction was legitimate.
A number of documents in the training manuals told salespeople that the proper monthly payment change for each $1,000 in gross [price] was $50. Page 2-30 in the 1993 manual says, “Rule! $1,000 in Gross = $50 in Payment. We can simplify by using a ‘rule of thumb’ Factor of 2.” And page 2-34 in the same manual says, “We know that $60 in payments is equal to $1,200 in Gross.” It also mentioned the “Factor of 2.”
However, on a page titled, “What Kind of Discount Are You Giving Me?” (3-9 in the 1993 manual), salespeople were told to use a different factor to figure payment reductions for discounts. The manual tells how to do this in front of the customer “Write down the discount amount, then using a “3” factor, convert that to a lower payment amount:—$ 1,500 discount equals $45 per month.”
Since the monthly payment reduction they were quoting (for 2 years) was about the same as the real one on a 3-year loan, most people would not have known that they were being cheated out of 40% of their discount.