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...

  1. 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".
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. AMEX, USAA and all of their affiliates do not want the bad consumer relations this push back is creating with their members and customers.
  6. 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.
  7. 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"
  8. Keep calling your National and State Dealer Associations demanding they get involved and stay involved... No excuses.
  9. 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.
  10. 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 referencehttp://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

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Comment by James Carroll on November 30, 2011 at 1:08pm

@ Arnold  I guess you missed what all the other people are getting excited about.  It's not about buyers getting a great deal. It's about one of our vendors believing the we need to go the way of the dinosour and we are paying for the pleasure of our own extinction.

Here are the links.

 http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/truecar-inc-announces-clear...

http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20110831%2FFIN...

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 30, 2011 at 1:07pm

@ Arnold:  KILL THE BEAST.

Comment by Arnold Tijerina on November 30, 2011 at 1:06pm

@Keith There are so many examples within this 35 page thread that talk about where/how dealers make money that its almost a "how-to" guide for consumers. What the people in this forum may not consider negative, isn't the same as how a consumer would read into this.

Comment by Joe Clementi on November 30, 2011 at 1:06pm

@James.  Thank you it was said in sincerity and with my heart.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 30, 2011 at 1:05pm

@ All:  I ask that we not digress into a b.s. argument about how this thread looks.  On point:  KILL THE BEAST.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 30, 2011 at 1:04pm

@ Arnold:  Thanks for clearing that up; I don't know who deleted it, either.  I still strongly dislike what you wrote, though.  Nobody has disparaged a single customer in this thread ala the "normal" for that "negative" image.  Your post, imho, couldn't have been more wrong.

Comment by Arnold Tijerina on November 30, 2011 at 1:04pm

Larry (or anyone else), why do you think this doesn't just contribute to the negative image car dealers have?

Comment by Arnold Tijerina on November 30, 2011 at 1:03pm

Here, I'll say it again! Y'all do realize how badly this thread/rant contributes to the negative image of car dealers, right?

Comment by Arnold Tijerina on November 30, 2011 at 1:01pm

Keith, I did NOT delete anything! I dont know who deleted it. 

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 30, 2011 at 12:59pm

For those of you that missed Arnold Tijerina's comment:  "Y'all do realize how badly this thread/rant contributes to the negative image of car dealers, right?" was what he wrote before he deleted it.  That was what Larry and I were replying to.

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