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 David Ruggles on December 13, 2011 at 3:48pm -
We already have "One Price." Its the window sticker MSRP. BUT market conditions, like an overabundance of inventory, cause business people to make adjustments. One Price only works when demand exceeds supply.
Saturn never did it successfully and lost billions trying. And SCION is a whole nuther subject, and not much of a success story.
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Comment by David T. Gould on December 13, 2011 at 2:44pm
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http://www.zag.com/websiteASSETS/whitepapers/ZAG-WhitePaper3.pdf is a good read Jim. I don't understand what makes anyone think that one price shopping and the extermination of automotive salesperson would lower a consumers price. Fixed market prices with less competition (dealers) would raise prices. Basic economics, no? Minimum wage employees as replacements? Hmmm... should be insulted for the industry. Clearly any individual that makes such a statement has not been held to task with monthly sales requirements, manufacturer customer satisfaction survey scores, certification requirements, 9 - 9 work shifts, and dealing in a business where the majority of your effort yields no results. Guess time would tell how invested an hourly employee would be in a customer's current and future business. At that point a hamburger is a hamburger and a car is car. Interesting enough, the consumer would not even "need" TrueCar.
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Comment by John McAdams on December 13, 2011 at 12:31pm
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The Alpha Dawg's in the House of the Rising Sun!
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 13, 2011 at 12:25pm
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The Devil Made a Call to Georgia
by Joshua Hirsch
The Devil made a call to Georgia, he was looking for a industry to steal.He was in a bind because of the forums chatter and was looking to make a deal.
When he came across a young man selling cars, and selling them HOT, then the Devil jumped on his speaker phone and said boy let me tell you what !! I guess you did not know it but I am a car guy too, and if you care to take a dare id make a bet with you.
Now you sell cars good son, but give the devil his due. I bet my business, against your industry because I think I’m better then you. The boy said my name is Jimmy and it may be a sin, but I take your bet your goanna regret cause I am the best there has ever been !! FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN, RUN BOYS RUN !!!
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FYI: TrueCar Dealership December Newsletter; Splitting TrueCar Open vs. Member Networks, ZAG name (brand) retired, dealership drawings, and more... (I apologize if this has already been posted... did not see on quick review) http://dealers.zag.com/id/report/TrueCarUpdate.pdf
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 13, 2011 at 6:53am
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____________________________________________
Train kept a rollin...all night long.......
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Comment by James A. Ziegler just nowDelete Comment
I am totally smiling when I see what I have started here... 30,000 page views on my blogs and at least fifty spinoff blogs by other people, national publications writing and debating, and finally dealer associations moving on it...ALL BECAUSE I STARTED THIS LITTLE MOVEMENT
TrueCar we've coming.
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These Truecar guys don't get it.
This is not a discussion nor is it a debate. It is a movement.
I don't care if the car is or is not a commodity. Scott Painter is NOT a lead provider, they are structuring deals acting as a broker. By what right do these people insert themselves into the deal and steal all of the profits using data we supplied? Stop getting in side discussions with them as if they have anything meaningful to say.
Instead, get on the phones and on the computer. Communicate with other dealerships and get them to put pressure on manufacturers, dealer associations, and government agencies to investigate TrueCar and the privacy data and financial data they're extracting. We are calling for deep discovery government investigation of these people and others at state and federal level. We'll be drafting up some letters to appropriate government agencies and mass distributing them to dealership people to sign and mail or email. BUT, for heavens sake, stop talking back to these TrueCar guys like it's a debate.
I have also been invited to speak with Scott painter today. I will do it although there is no possibility either of us will change each others minds. I have these opinions and only government investigation will clear it up and prove or disprove suspicions.
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Comment by Stan Sher on December 13, 2011 at 1:44am
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Scott Painter had his people call me. Scott Painter wants to have a call with me. What do you all think? Should I do it? You think he wants to offer me a job? Perhaps fly me in to show me his operations to try to prove to me that he is legit? Please let me know your thoughts and opinions. If anything comes out of this to anyone is that even little ole me can get the personal attention of someone as huge as Scott Painter. This comes to show you that if you use the internet the right way you can get attention from the way up.
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 12, 2011 at 3:47pm
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@David.....nice article!!!
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