TRUE CAR and ZAG Cyber Bandits, Parasites or Good for the Car Business?
Jim Ziegler asks...
I am hearing a lot of discussion about True Car and ZAG. I continually scratch my head and wonder if desperate dealers are doing the marketing limbo "How Low Can You Go?"
Are we so bad at what we do that we have to line up and pay vendors to lose money? AND, who is giving these people access to your data that is used against you?
Who owns these companies and what might be their ulterior motive? Sometimes I ask questions to which I already know the answer.
Am I wrong?
What do you think... JIM
Jim Ziegler's Guidance and Recommended Action Plan:
Ten Areas We Need to Concentrate on to Bring This Monster to It's Knees...
- Government investigation of ALL Data Aggregators taking consumer information from dealers' DMS. Sadly enough, dealers who do business with TrueCar are exposed to liability charges. Cut off all access to unecessary data, no matter who takes it from the dealers DMS and make it illegal to "resell identifiable consumer data" and "transactional data".
- Educate Your Fellow Dealers; If anyone takes financial transactional data, they expose the dealer that allowed it to violations, especially if it is passed on to other vendors or shared.
- Educate Consumers to what they're doing with their information...
a. You buy a car from a dealer, do you really want your personal information, and maybe even your financial information, passed along and sold and shared by "God knows who?"
b. These People Charge the Dealer $300 which the dealers have to build into the deal
c. Your Privacy and the Security of your Information could theoretically compromise your identity if you do business a company that takes data from the dealership. - Educate Investors and potential investors they could possibly be mislead if anyone is telling them this is a safe investment because of all of the dealers pushing back, associations pushing back, and government regulators in many states coming after TrueCar's business model as NOT compliant, in some cases they're saying it is Not Legal.
- AMEX, USAA and all of their affiliates do not want the bad consumer relations this push back is creating with their members and customers.
- Cancel your dealership's Affilation with TrueCar. Tell people with TrueCar certificates that YOU don't honor TrueCar and you feel the company is NOT reputable. Educate consumers as to perceived data exposure if they buy from a TrueCar dealer. Make sure that each consumer knows that using TrueCar actually increases their vehicle cost by $300 to $400.
- Make the dealers selling at huge losses take all of those deals. Big problem right now is too many Nissan Dealers and others are taking huge losers to get the factory money. The TrueCar reverse-auction business model will continually push those numbers down until the factory money is non-existent. Consumers need to hear from many dealers, "We don't do TrueCar"
- Keep calling your National and State Dealer Associations demanding they get involved and stay involved... No excuses.
- Get the Manufacturers into the game. If GM, Ford, Toyota, and other majors change the rules about how we advertise and do business to protect the dealers, we can cut off their ability to set pricing. So keep it up at every dealer meeting. Call your Dealer Council Members and protest to your factory reps. Tell the manufacturers, if they want showroom and facility improvements, we need the ability to make fair profits.
- Tell everyone you know. Educate other dealers and industry people. Watch the Painter interviews... I believe this is the first time a vendor has publicly announced they intend to bring down the dealers and hijack our business, taking our profits and starving us out with our own data. Painter has said manufacturers and dealers should go bankrupt and he, in his God-like way "will control distribution..."
When the TrueCar-Yahoo Deal kicks in we need to stand firm and "Just Say No" we don't honor TrueCar deals.
Read this article as a reference: http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20110831%2FFIN...
AND, if you doubt the mission... read this... http://www.zag.com/websiteASSETS/whitepapers/ZAG-WhitePaper3.pdf
Comment
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on April 11, 2012 at 11:39am -
If the agreement you'll sign supports the text you quoted, e.g. no passing of the data to 3rd parties, then I would go ahead.
DMI is the company that does the DMS data extraction for nearly everybody of any size that gets data that way.
Importantly, though, on a different note it would be good to ask for a review by the IT staff of what access(es) are granted to who else to the DMS. And look hard at the who and why of that.
My $.02.
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Comment by Criss Castle on April 11, 2012 at 11:33am
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Thoughts? To enroll or not to enroll?
SiriusXM® Pre-Owned Vehicle Program
Hyundai dealers wishing to participate in this program must enroll with SiriusXM®. Dealer participation in this program is voluntary.
By opting into this program, you authorize SiriusXM® to extract the required data from your Dealer Management System (DMS).
Digital Motorworks Inc (DMI) has been contracted by SiriusXM® to perform the seamless and secure data extract from your DMS system, like they do for many OEMs and other 3rd parties.
Data will only be used to activate the Pre-Owned Dealer Demo Service for your vehicle inventory and automatically start your customers’ complimentary trials and to contact them with programming and subscription options.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on April 10, 2012 at 12:26pm
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Here is another one: BestBuy. http://marketday.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/10/11119512-best-buy-c...
Consumers are changing . . . rapidly . . .
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on April 10, 2012 at 12:18pm
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@ Heather: I didn't go this time. Several reasons for that, but essentially I did not have a good reason to attend and try to work out that trip. Happy to meet sometime at one of these shenanigans, if we can. I think I will be at the next one. Thanks!
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Comment by Heather Graham on April 10, 2012 at 12:16pm
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Interesting analogies! Sorry to hear that there was mistreatment....always disappointing to hear. Show was ok, not sure I will go again. Hopefully our paths will cross another time!
I kept my eye open for you too Keith!
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on April 10, 2012 at 11:47am
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Sorry Heather after the way Mike Roscoe and Digital Dealer mistreated me a few years back, I am afraid I'm done with attending "Digital Disappointment" it has become "Spring break at night, No-Show in the daylight"
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on April 10, 2012 at 11:45am
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@ Jim: I heard the same.
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I would have love to have seen you there Jim! I'm sure you would have brought some energy to the event!
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Michael, saying TrueCar "Bombed" might have been an overstatement... what I was referring to is that some of your people confided to others it wasn't what you were hoping for.
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Keith....love your observations from last few postings.
Re- Truecars....can't speak to whether or not they 'bombed'......this was my first DD show and I was surprised at lite traffic in the exhibit hall overall.
I did get the pleasure of meeting and chatting (for quite a while) with Michael Timmons, Stewart and a couple others. All very pleasant and helpful. Stewart (Stuart?) was very versed on the Maryland laws which is where my dealers are located. My dealers are still interested in Trucar leads, but certainly not pushing the data. I'm told there are new contracts and pricing coming soon (changed from what was rolled out in Feb.).
As with many companies, there are a lot of good intentioned employees. I'm with others on this forum....not really buying that Mr. Painter has had a change of heart regarding dealers, but more just trying to save what he built.
Just my 2 cents!
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