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 Larry Muirhead on November 30, 2011 at 12:32pm
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7162 Views... Why so few hit the "Promoted it" I believe that's just a tally button.
If I'm not mistaken, that button just means that you promoted it to a friend with an invite or to linkedin or somthing like that??
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Comment by Brian Willian on November 30, 2011 at 12:28pm
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Well Keith, they must be selling the heck out of Hyundai and Mazda. Let's assume those 200 ZAG deals represent a generous 25 percent of their total new car deliveries, that's 800 total new car deliveries for the month across those four stores. They average 106 new Hondas, so that's 694 dellveries between 2 Hyundai points and a Mazda point. Just trying to make sense of it all. I want to understand why someone would go out of their way to defend a company that I feel is attacking my chosen career and the way I provide for my family.
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@ Brian and Jose....
So.... Without ZAG, Acura will survive this trend of profit loss that is inevidable?
Copied from
http://www.zag.com/websiteASSETS/whitepapers/ZAG-WhitePaper3.pdfWith the haggle gone, the role of the commissioned salesperson changes dramatically (read: flirting with extinction) and, accompanying it, the prospect of dramatically streamlined dealer operations. Satisfied consumers mean higher sales volumes over time. Because dealers are giving consumers what they want
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Comment by James Carroll on November 30, 2011 at 12:25pm
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Comment by Michael Deville on November 30, 2011 at 12:25pm
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The problem is that dealer can't see tomorrow, they see today. The ones with an eye on the future will see the problem. The bad thing is the blind will cause all the problems. GET YOUR OWN Customers. You all have the Dollar power to do it. If you spend 10000 on truecar you can get your own customer.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 30, 2011 at 12:20pm -
@ James http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/truecar-inc-announces-clear... for Clearbook announcement.
@Brian, I believe Jose is saying that only the non-Acura stores use Zag, and I think the total would be likely across the two Hyundai and the one Mazda store. Is that right, Jose?
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Anyone have the ClearBook link handy? I'll look back
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@Jose, So you still contend you are delivering 200 Hondas per month via TrueCar since you don't have it available for Acura? Is that 200 number for a dealer group or for Honda of Ocala specifically? I am asking so we can avoid a credibility issue. As it stands, I understand you to say that Honda of Ocala delivers 200 Truecar deals per month which is not supported by the data, nor is it plausible. Could you clarify that for me and others, please?
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But only 24 people promoting... we need people to hit the promote button too.
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on November 30, 2011 at 12:14pm
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I appreciate the transparency of this forum Jose and welcome you here. If there is a good side to TrueCar, I want to hear it. BUT truthfully, everything I research tells me they have an agenda to eradicate dealer profits in ALL Profit Centers. With Mike Maroone president of AutoNation on their Board, I am more than slightly suspicious as to who is making this move and when all of the other dealers are gone who inherits the business? They have made their agenda clear.
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