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 James A. Ziegler on February 25, 2012 at 9:04am

Alpha Dawg asks... DEALERS do you know which vendors are sifting through your data and using it against you? Do you know who is extracting your customer information and selling it to your competitors?

WE DO.. and we're making a list and checking it twice, it's about to get ugly (uglier) as we are preparing a 30-page whitepaper for widespread distribution in our industry.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 23, 2012 at 12:51pm

I spent some time talking to Mike Timmons yesterday.  I was blunt, and so was he, and it was a lively conversation.  I'm not sure anything will change, but I did enjoy that clear and straight ahead conversation.  Beat the hell out of the "Investor Speak" call that I did with Scott Painter months ago when several of us talked to him.  At least Mike is a car guy.

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 23, 2012 at 9:35am

This was found on Jeremy Alicandri's thread on Linkedin, Automotive News, titled: What do you think of Scott Painter's(TrueCar.com CEO) plan to eliminate your new car sales staff? link below.

"Michael Mallery • Hi, My name is Mike Mallery, The DMS company that I work for took an aggressive approach on this subject and created Guard/Mate.

Guard/Mate provides dealers with the information they need to regain control of their data. Guard/Mate audits the vendors that have access to Auto/Mate’s dealership management system (DMS). On a monthly basis, every dealer receives a list of all the vendors who have access to the dealer’s data, as well as when they access it and from which part of the system the data was pulled.

This is a free service to all Auto/Mate customers."


http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&type=member&gid=247...

Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 23, 2012 at 12:16am

2 of 2 videos for Car Research I made at NADA about their Dealer Data Guarantee. I support them for their commitment to dealers and protecting dealer data. To be clear, I'm not compensated for my opinion:

Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 23, 2012 at 12:12am

1 of 2 videos for Car Research I made at NADA about their Dealer Data Guarantee. I support them for their commitment to dealers and protecting dealer data. To be clear, I'm not compensated for my opinion:
First Dealer Data Guarantee video for Car Reseach:

Comment by Heather Graham on February 22, 2012 at 12:25pm

Wow Jim....quite an endeavor....look foward to seeing it!

Comment by James A. Ziegler on February 22, 2012 at 11:56am

Interesting – In this blog post from Monday (02.21.12), GeoNexus only refers to “Zag” as Scott Painter’s current venture.  No reference to TrueCar at all.  Also watch the interview, which DOES mention TrueCar.

 

 

This week in Venture Capital @TWIVC

 

Interestingly enough, the guy interviewing Painter is one of the Partners at GRP Partners... I wonder how that interview was going to slant? 

 

 

Comment by James A. Ziegler on February 22, 2012 at 11:52am

Sorry I've been a little absent here recently. We are working on a 25 page white paper on TrueCar and other data aggregators... much of the information compiled off of these blogs.... when it's finished it is our intent to hard mail it to every dealer and executive in the industry. 

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 22, 2012 at 11:50am

Thank you Michael.

Comment by Jay Prassel on February 22, 2012 at 11:48am

Thanks for the update.

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