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 Jim Kristoff on December 4, 2011 at 3:38pm

http://robfontano.com/2011/12/urgent-message-zag-true-car-attack/

Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 4, 2011 at 2:41pm

Those of you on the telephone committee, we've moved it to Tuesday... check your email.

Comment by David Ruggles on December 4, 2011 at 1:55pm

Thanks guys!

Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 4, 2011 at 1:51pm

Gave you a little help David..........

Comment by Jerry Thibeau on December 4, 2011 at 12:57pm

Individual complaints from TrueCar customers now on Flickr:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/truecarscam/

Comment by Mike Warwick on December 4, 2011 at 12:25pm

I'd like to see us come up with a consistent message that dealers could add to their websites explaining why we won't participate in Truecar pricing and believe that it is a scam on the dealer and consumer.  It would be powerful for the customer to see dealer after dealer with a unified message about Truecar.  I've seen three Truecar ads in the last 90 minutes.  To borrow Grant's phrase, we need MASSIVE ACTION to counter their media onslaught.

Comment by Jerry Thibeau on December 4, 2011 at 9:33am

www.truecarscam.comis now an active site.  Just need to start adding content.  Here's what I am going to build.

1. Video telling why TrueCar is a scam.

2. I took individual snapshots of each complaints and will put them all up under one "Complaints Tab." 

3. Since we will be making dealers look bad who use TrueCar, I am going to have an "Avoid These Dealers" tab and we'll start populating it with known dealers using TrueCar

4. I will have a "Trust Worthy Dealers" tab for all those who take the pledge not to play the TrueCar scam.

5. And in case the consumer insist on using TrueCar.  I will have a "Whatever you do don't click on this button"  This page will have a message saying.  "if you insist on trying TrueCar, please do the following: "Submit the lead using a bogus name and e-mail.  This way you won't get spammed by dealers."

If anyone else has any thoughts, please let me know.  I think this should put a hurting to them once we get this to page one on Google.

Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 4, 2011 at 7:40am

@Jerry.....THAT is a great link to "Get Satisfaction"......TrueCar must use that website to interact with the consumers.....awesome stuff!!

Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 4, 2011 at 7:30am
I hope every dealer just tells the customers TrueCar is scammy and we don't honor that ridiculous price.
Comment by Jerry Thibeau on December 3, 2011 at 9:06pm

Here is the link, you can view it in a bigger format: http://www.screencast.com/t/KcNPy9YCdE9B

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