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 Arnold Tijerina on November 30, 2011 at 3:24pm

Steve - Point made. I still dont believe it's a good idea to have this floating around. Imagine if a big website got a hold of it. Hell, TrueCar could publish this. It certainly helps their cause, IMO.

David - It might be but it only reinforces the public's perception that they need the information. I guarantee nobody is going to publicize this thread and ask for the public's opinion of it. That would create a flame war.

Comment by David Ruggles on November 30, 2011 at 3:17pm

Arnold -  Actually it might be refreshing for the public to be privy to some of this.

Comment by Steve Stauning on November 30, 2011 at 3:16pm

Sorry Arnold, all I have are facts on my side. Here are the latest rankings for the search "truecar" on 3 auto blogs (these are from RankChecker and do not include any personal search or history data):

dealerrefresh.com 22 on Google 128 on Bing

dealerelite.net Not in the Top 200 on Google or Bing      

automotivedigitalmarketing.com 85 on Google 47 on Bing

These are how a consumer who has never visited these sites would see the results... that is, unless they frequent other sites (like Twitter) where TrueCar might be discussed... then those results would prevail and push the autos sites even lower in the rankings.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 30, 2011 at 3:08pm

@ Steve!  Thanks for coming by.

Comment by Arnold Tijerina on November 30, 2011 at 3:07pm

Steve, I don't go to DealerRefresh all that much, clear my cookies regularly and use secure browsing so I don't see how your argument is valid.

Comment by Steve Stauning on November 30, 2011 at 3:03pm

Actually, Arnold when YOU Google "TrueCar" the DealerRefresh result is 3rd because that is a site you frequent (and Google knows this). When a consumer (who has never visited this site or DealerRefresh) Googles "TrueCar" they don't see any automotive blogs regardless of how well they "SEO." 

Your results on Google are tailored to you, and have been for a long time.

Comment by Jason Cohen on November 30, 2011 at 3:01pm

I love how truecar/ZAG are trying make the focus on price only, and creating a bidding war between dealers, while not allowing the dealers to differentiate themselves by value at all.  They are the crooks.  

 

And just as an FYI, we have been approached by ZAG several times over the years and while considering them at one point the legal team for my dealer group looked over the contracts and told us that we were not allowed to sign up with them because they are violating NJ state advertising laws by deceitfully advertising a price in relationship to invoice, due to the fact that the invoice posted is not the true cost of the vehicle.  When we informed them of this (and sent them copies of the legislation stating this) they basically said "oh well, we'll just sign up your competitors instead"... and thats exactly what they did.  

Comment by Arnold Tijerina on November 30, 2011 at 2:59pm

Of course I'm  not conversing with consumers here, as this is an insider discussion only.  How can this thread feed into public perception if they aren't a party to it?

@David - DealerElite doesn't require you to be a member to view the threads, which means each and every comment, this thread, everything said in it, etc will all be indexed by Google and available to consumers. This may be an "insider discussion" but consumers and the general public can see and read it. That was my point. If you Google "TrueCar" the 3rd link is this a post from DealerRefresh on this topic. What do you think is going to happen to this thread once Google gets a hold of it?

Comment by David Ruggles on November 30, 2011 at 2:54pm

Of course I'm  not conversing with consumers here, as this is an insider discussion only.  How can this thread feed into public perception if they aren't a party to it? 

 

How many consumers would pay a reasonable gross profit if they knew exactly what it was?

Comment by Ocie C. Welch III on November 30, 2011 at 2:44pm

Anything that helps you sell cars long term is a good thing,short term not good.As far as TRUE CAR goes I encourage you to get your salespeople to go to the site and try it. At least they they will know what the consumers are seeing. Paying 295.00 for a new car lead and 395.00 for a used car lead doesn't say much about the dealership. Low gross and no gross does not help a salesperson or a dealership. The consumers should see the TRUE CAR presentation to the dealers. They remind you of all the money you could make on the backend. They will most likely start selling warranties,gap and everything they can. 

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