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 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

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Comment by Randy Fry on January 13, 2012 at 9:29am

and two other companys just about like that one , with CA adresses, that i never seen before

so either sister company's or my email was sold

Comment by Randy Fry on January 13, 2012 at 9:19am

after i put in a lead for a vehicle thru TC now my spam box is full of another affiliate of them for cars

anybody else's??
Comment by Jay Prassel on January 13, 2012 at 9:05am

@Keith,

I need to clarify from what I posted yesterday. I shouldn’t try to multitask when I’m onsite with a dealer client.

Privacy Notices:

TrueCar is NOT an affiliate but a “nonaffiliate”.

The Privacy Notice Sample has been re-posted at: http://premierleadsolutions.com/privacy/

At the bottom of page 1:

For nonaffiliates to market to you

 If you share info with TrueCar, this should be marked YES and the customer has the option to opt-out (not shared), as required by law.

Explanation: If a dealer shares personal information about a customer with an unaffiliated financial company for the other company's marketing purposes, an op-tout is required (i.e., an opt-out version of the model forms must be used).

While I’m not a lawyer, the language for “nonaffiliates to market to YOU”, indicates that TC can only MARKET to the dealership’s customers, not share or use that info for their own marketing purposes. I will work on clarifying this.

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 13, 2012 at 6:37am

Stephen Hansen, President of TrueCar - An open letter to you.

TrueCar’s purchase of the domain names, f**kedbythedealer.com, .net, and .org is utterly deplorable, condemnable in the strongest possible terms. I call on you, Stephen Hansen, President of TrueCar to immediately abandon these domains and provide a public condemnation of their existence and accept full responsibility for TrueCar’s actions in the purchase of these URLs.

Tom Kelly

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 13, 2012 at 5:30am

Stephen Hansen, President of TrueCar:

Stephen Hansen on January 11, 2012 at 12:14 pm

“May I just take a moment to say, as President of TrueCar, I have never discussed or authorized anyone to make a purchase of any anti-dealer URL. At no time have we ever contemplated an “anti-dealer” campaign. Love us or hate us, we’re not stupid.”


Comment by Sean Lucas on January 13, 2012 at 1:58am

Great News Jim!  Keep up the good fight!

Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 12, 2012 at 11:30pm

Oklahoma Motor Vehicle Commission just shut Down TrueCar in Oklahoma. Cited advertising and the fact they are acting as a broker. Dealers will be fined $1000 per occurrence for any deals with TrueCar after this until resolved.

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 12, 2012 at 4:12pm

Good news.....4 down....let's keep them down

Comment by Tom Drommond on January 12, 2012 at 3:58pm

TrueCar/Zag Suspends Business in Oklahoma
 
TrueCar/Zag officials notified the Oklahoma Motor Vehicle Commission yesterday that they have suspended service to Oklahoma dealers and will not resume service until they have approval to move forward. Roy Dockum, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Motor Vehicle Commission, sent a letter to TrueCar/Zag on Tuesday, January 10th, telling them to cease business in Oklahoma because of concerns of brokering and advertising violations.
 
TrueCar/Zag has now ceased business in Louisiana, Colorado, Virginia and Nebraska. According to an Automotive News article, TrueCar/Zag said it plans to make additional changes to its business practices in coming weeks on a state-by-state basis. Those changes mostly relate to dealer pricing and advertising, the company said in its statement.

Comment by Jay Prassel on January 12, 2012 at 1:55pm

@Keith, no I didn't know that they could market to a dealership's customer. The template would then have to be changed to fit that particular dealership. These were just a starting point.

I haven't researched what data TC is grabbing, using or maybe selling. The Privacy Act Forms I uploaded need to be constructed for each individual dealership and needs to disclose what they allow with certain data. I suggest that every dealer take the templates and have their lawyer finalize it as necessary. If anyone needs a lawyer, let me know. jay@prassel.com or text: 847.910.1681

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