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 Heather Graham on March 7, 2012 at 4:06pm

lol Tom....I agree.  And too, remember I said that they say that this was not how pricing was based! 

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on March 7, 2012 at 1:44pm

@ Heather...and so it follows, adjusting fee to sold units for past 90 days to reflect fees for next 90 days still equals broker to my way of thinking. "If it walks like a duck........"

Comment by Heather Graham on March 7, 2012 at 1:05pm

wow - that's amazing Bryan....Thanks for link!  Some dealers I work with still want to roll with Truecars (however no access to DMS)....I'm still leary for many reasons. 

Subscriber based pricing we received was really varied for each store and appears to me to be based on number of sales/leads from the past (accounts were cancelled in early Dec.).  The rep says not so....but I do find that hard to believe (I know how many leads/sales from each store).  And they only commited for 3 months - again, that goes with my theory of pricing being based off leads/sales - I imagine after 3 months those prices will be adjusted to reflect sales/leads.

Comment by bryan w shufelt on March 6, 2012 at 4:15pm

I was driving back from lunch today listening to the national news and they said DONT BUY A CAR TODAY!  so says TRUE CAR!  ( I looked it up online and here is the article.)

 

by contrast, vehicles will typically sell at 8.5% to 9.5% below MSRP. That’s a big difference compared to 5.1%, or to 6.0%, which is the average discount off MSRP for cars selling on Tuesday, March 6.

All of these figures come courtesy of TrueCar.com, a website that gathers car-buying data and helps consumers gather prices from dealerships without all the sticky uncomfortaable haggling.

 

http://moneyland.time.com/2012/03/05/why-this-tuesday-is-one-of-the...

Comment by James A. Ziegler on March 6, 2012 at 2:21pm

Be advised that Charles Kim of TrueCar is now connecting with us under the Twitter name @SoCalChuck

Comment by Randy Fry on March 6, 2012 at 9:14am

My grandad and dad both told me growing up that, no matter how hard you tried, that you can not change the stripes or STENCH on a skunk..................................

 

 

 

 

Comment by James A. Ziegler on March 5, 2012 at 6:05pm

TrueCar is mounting a HUGE Public relations campaign claiming they have reformed and no longer want to put dealers out of business. They actually are laying out major bucks trying to win the hearts and minds of the people they are targeting for extinction. They have a great spokesperson, Michael Timmons, telling us they have changed and they now love car dealers????? Excuse me, I have a severe disconnect when I see and hear Scott Painter still giving interviews and appearances about how obsolete and soon-to-be extinct you are. These people cannot be trusted until they agree to get totally out of our data and stay out.

TrueCar executives are saying, please don't hate us because we used to hate you before you kicked our butt to the curb. NOW, we love car dealers and car people...we've changed. BULL CRAP TrueCar is as evil and devious  as ever

Now these people are Sponsoring Digital Dealer Conference? Does anybody besides me think that's totally wrong?

Comment by Michael Timmons on March 4, 2012 at 9:20pm

 Thank you for the input as differing opinions are the foundation for social media.

Comment by Peter A. Bond on March 4, 2012 at 9:00pm

I must say that True ar and it's practices run in a different direction for dealerships. Your company and your manipulative methods and techniques is a very stark examples to handle people in the market. Your fees to Dealerships is a minimal fee of $299.00 for new and MUCH higher for Used vehicles. This cost gets passed onto consumers while you reduce or attempt to do so to cover your fees! True Car does not serve the consumer, nor do it assist the dealer base they claim to serve! The business is a very flawed practice of raising consumer paying True Car through the dealer pricing and the profit dealers make. I personally ever want to layer True Car expenses while stating a consumer discount  is advertised to be less! Example; I pay $13,500 for a used vehicle and spend $400.00 to bring it into perfect condition for the buyer. I know have the original price of $13,500.00 and True car added $399.00 dollars for their profit. We now have a vehicle that we have invested our money in of $13,899.00. I have an idea that I just added $399.00 to my actual cost of doing business! How does any dealership or consumer benefit from $400.00 increase of a business doing business over their previous cost? I know that one plus one equals two! True car's business plan assumes that the American people don't or can't add. I believe we can and I believe adding an additional $400. 00 to anything us all! Imagine if they ever decide to represent ot dogs under the slogan that they will save us on the price of a hot dog. It is now $ 399.00 more expensive for a hot dog but they claim to save the consumer money! This is a FRAUD in my humbled and informed opinion! I have thousands of dealer clients we regularly do business with.

Lastly, STOP doing business with this outfit. It is not healthy for you or your dealerships! I can give you a HUGE advantage based on guaranteed results. E-mail peterabond@aol.com and regardless od business providing products OR SERVICES, we will do miricals ! Thanks. We also need 50 reps throughout the United States IMMEDIATELY!

Comment by Peter A. Bond on March 4, 2012 at 8:25pm

My company, Automotive Resource Group is a 27 year old firm that out distanced True Car by a mile! You do not need their services! We will give you automotive leads who are in the market and cut the middleman expenses completely out. True car has nothing on us! Our leads are in the market and ready to buy! You will always know 12/24/365! There is so much to discuss. Call my cell at 321-890-5971 for a personal chat!

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