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 Keith Shetterly on December 9, 2011 at 11:16am
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 9, 2011 at 11:15am
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This is what I put on Grant Cardone's video where he calls TrueCar "your friend":
"Eh. As a friend, TrueCar gets your back better than any knife you ever had. If TrueCar doesn't become a wider and dealer-killing threat as their CEO has publicly stated as his agenda, it won't be because salespeople sold better. It will be because folks did more than just self-market themselves via the notoriety (and I mean folks on every side of this issue, not Grant in particular). To me, this video from Grant would be a little like changing Paul Revere's famous call from "The British are Coming!" to "The British are Your Friends!". It would be good when using notoriety marketing to remember that, for a time, even Benedict Arnold was notorious, too."
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 9, 2011 at 11:02am
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That $200 Million they raised... after all of the dealer and manufacturer push back, I doubt they'll be able to buy a box of Cheerios with a strong co-signer before this is over... IPO? Got yer IPO right here.
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Comment by James Easter on December 9, 2011 at 10:56am
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@Mike & @Keith: I certainly found that to be a bit incredulous as well!! Ditto on the WOW!
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 9, 2011 at 10:55am
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@ Mike: They called your boss about your blogging??? Wow. Just double wow, really. "Out of context" . . . certainly not out of dirty tricks.
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Comment by Mike Warwick on December 9, 2011 at 10:45am
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Just completed an interview with Automotive News regarding Honda's stance against Truecar. The message is getting out. Truecar called my boss today about my blogging and wanted to state that "Mr. Painter does not want to see the elimination of car salespeople. He was taken out of context one day and it has been blown out of porportion." This emphasizes the importance of keeping these videos front and center. It seems Mr.Painter has one stance in front of the Venture Capital crowd and another for dealers. After all, he speaks investor!
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 9, 2011 at 10:38am
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James you are about to be amazed how many dealers are lobbying their manufacturers to take action NOW. I know of several manufacturers that are having executive meeting concerning this issue. If I were a potential TrueCar ZAG investor, it would be a really bust of an IPO...
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Please speak out Honda dealers - I saw yesterday that Automotive News indeed was wanting to speak with Honda dealers Dawg. Good to see a couple of the manufacturer's taking notice of this serious issue.
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I have heard that...
Dave Barkholtz at Automotive News is doing a story on the Honda crackdown on ZAG / True Car and is looking for Honda Dealers-managers that are willing to speak out.
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