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 7, 2011 at 10:28pm -
It won't be long until we see the advent of "TrueFinance." They want it all under the guise of "transparency."
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Comment by Jerry Thibeau on December 7, 2011 at 10:26pm
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Sorry Grant, but I disagree with your video. Someone once told me you said that the Internet was a fad and it would go away. Well you were wrong on that one and you're wrong on this one. Sure TrueCar is not at thbig right now, but it will be if allowed to grow. Grant, you need to dive in and educate yourself on what's going on here. We'll make you a believer!
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Comment by Stan Sher on December 7, 2011 at 10:25pm
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If you look at @truecar on twitter you will see they are not doing anything to defend themselves. I make it a point to look at who mentions them and send them a mention informing them of why they made a mistake being affiliated with them. TrueCar has not done one thing to defend their online reputation. A company with $200 million in funding that is ignoring shots that are being taken at them.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 7, 2011 at 10:16pm
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EVERYBODY WATCH THE SMOKING GUN OF CEO PAINTER EXPOSING HIS AGENDA AND THE TRUTH ABOUT TRUECAR: http://blip.tv/this-week-in-youtube/truecar-1265643
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Wow guys, look at Grant Cardone's video. I am not surprised. I love Grant and respect him for everything he does but I really think his comments prove that he has not experienced a TrueCar lead in a dealership. He never seen a customer come in with a printout trying to buy a car at $1000 loss. What kind of close will you use on that scenario? Grant is being motivational and positive and I like what he is doing. Again, I love what he does for us and our business but let's get a little more real here. Check out his message.
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Comment by Jarrod Glandt on December 7, 2011 at 9:55pm
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 7, 2011 at 9:30pm
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EVERY person reading this thread should take a look at this video where they take pains to point out they use ACTUAL SALES TRANSACTIONAL DATA . . . http://blip.tv/this-week-in-youtube/truecar-1265643 and they claim 25% in this video, 75% was the goal, gathered data from banks . . . and banks, insurance, and ACTUAL DEALERS. FROM SCOTT PAINTER'S OWN MOUTH. At 6min57sec he says he uses data licensed from "ACTUAL DEALERS".
DEALER DATA WARS: REVOLUTIONS DON'T WAIT!
At 9min54 there is another discussion that's interesting. In that minute after he goes into how this involves the BACKEND SYSTEMS OF DEALERS.
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 7, 2011 at 7:02pm
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EXCERPT FROM ZAG CONTRACT.
Item 4 of the contract tells you what their doing:
Dealer acknowledges and agrees that Zag may use certain information related to the sale of vehicles sold by Dealer, and Zag reserves the right to use macro-level, aggregated data to evaluate performance and best practices with the primary objective of better understanding customer behavior, pricing trends and other statistical insights that may lead to animproved implementation of Zag and its affiliates' products and services
4. Restrictions on Use of Information and Sales Data. Zag will use the information received pursuant to this Agreement in compliance with all applicable privacy laws and will not publish or share any Dealer or Customer personally identifiable information to any third party. Notwithstanding the foregoing or anything to the contrary in this Agreement, Dealer acknowledges and agrees that Zag may use certain information related to the sale of vehicles sold by Dealer, and Zag reserves the right to use macro-level, aggregated data to evaluate performance and best practices with the primary objective of better understanding customer behavior, pricing trends and other statistical insights that may lead to an improved implementation of Zag and its affiliates' products and services. Zag will not use such information in order to initiate marketing-related communications to any of Dealer's customers other than those customers who have used or otherwise interacted with a Zag Program. Dealer agrees that Zag or Zag's third party provider (only so long as such provider is under an agreement with Zag with confidentiality and non-use provisions substantially similar to that provided under this Agreement) may access Dealer's sales data through the DMS system login and password provided in Exhibit A below.
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Comment by Mike Warwick on December 7, 2011 at 6:50pm
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In Painter's world, "The car salesman will go the way of the travel agent." The majority of the people commenting on this thread are digital marketing professionals. We need to rally the salespople to become involved in this cause.
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 7, 2011 at 6:29pm
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The scarier thing is TrueCar's affiliation with Dealertrack.......if you use Dealertrack to submit your deals to the banks......TrueCar has ALL of the transactional data............
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