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 Thomas A. Kelly on February 19, 2012 at 5:43pm

Well put Keith!....

Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 19, 2012 at 5:30pm

Here's another link to a data aggregation story, this one about Google and Facebook.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46446950/ns/technology_and_science-secu...

Read this article and ask yourself how would you feel if Google and Facebook decided to offer a for-fee service to help you reach customers and sell cars BUT also disrespected dealers, including talking about closing dealers.  Wouldn't feel very safe, would it?

And that is the issue:  Data aggregation is not going away any time soon, and it is much bigger than this industry.  HOWEVER, what needs to go away is the direct use of this data aggregation against the dealers.  Even if we dry up the DMS data leaks, which we NEED TO DO, we need an advocate company working on this industry's behalf to help use data aggregation to help us sell more cars--NOT to sell cars while also gleefully arranging our cataclysmic demise.

Any takers?

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 19, 2012 at 4:57pm

Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 19, 2012 at 12:54pm

@ Thomas:  Data aggregation has been going on for decades.  To me, that ethical question is a good one, but I kind of feel like the gnat on the rear of the elephant--if it goes where we want, it isn't because we pushed it but because it goes where it wants.  And we just rode along!

My issue with TrueCar has always been the way they use their information tools in a well-advertised anti-dealer agenda, all cloaked in "Save the Consumer!" b.s.  To paraphrase my position, "Data aggregation doesn't kill dealers, people using data aggregation kill dealers."  

It's amazing to me that TrueCar totally missed the boat that the dealers are the ones PAYING TrueCar.  How can anyone expect to get away with disrespecting their customers?  Isn't that the "bad experience" that TrueCar was bogus-ly trying to "save" consumers from at dealerships??

TrueCar has a lot of power that could be used for the good of consumers AND dealers.  First step on that road, if I could edict it, would be a regime change.  In other words, change the people USING the data aggregation.

My $.02.  :)

Comment by James A. Ziegler on February 19, 2012 at 9:58am

I would only hope that consumers and car buyers would read these posts and wake up that TrueCar and companies like TrueCar are collecting and merging huge amounts of DATA about them personally. They are positioning themselves as consumer-friendly, when, in fact they are building files on all of their unsuspecting customers and the customers of the dealers they are extracting out of dealers' computers by force and threat. 

WE ARE TRYING TO PROTECT OUR CUSTOMERS FROM TRUECAR AND COMPANIES LIKE THEM. 

Thomas all of your posts have great weight and value. We are grateful you are on the point watching out for the industry BUT, we also must remember, TrueCar and other Data Pirates ( my conceptual perception of these people)   cannot do anything with that data they collect all over the universe without Dealers to do business with...and, from what I am seeing, nobody wants to do business with them.

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 19, 2012 at 8:32am

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 19, 2012 at 7:57am

I submit that with or without access to dealers DMS, TrueCar is able to extrapolate every detail of every auto transaction they chose to look at with high precision and a low rate of false positives. DMS access serves only to confirm with 100% accuracy what they already can know through their highly accurate machine learning processes. What was never intended to be known, IS known, with amazing accuracy. 30 plus data bases according to Painter himself. Cutting off access to our customers information from our DMS is the right thing to do. It will not stop or even slow TC or anyone else with the ability to purchase the "knowns" to determine the "unknowns". I am most concerned with the ethics of assembling, extrapolating and concluding what should remain private information. What is apparently legal does not mean it is acceptable or ethical. This is how I see the Data Wars shaping up anyways.

While most will acknowledge the use of such software I suspect, I also believe they would ask us to believe it is not their intended use and that anything gleaned would be unintentional or a byproduct. I do not believe it for a minute, I have learned not to believe or trust TrueCar, they have given many lessons on the subject..

What is your opinion on the ethics of machine learning what was never intended to be known about a vehicle transaction?

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 19, 2012 at 6:32am

Looking for a job?...TrueCar may need your help.

Statistician / Data Mining Specialist

Email jobs to meGet job alerts Add this job as aBookmark
Description:

Statistician/Data Mining Specialist Santa Monica, CA

Who We Are: TrueCar, Inc. is a revolutionary Internet company that is fundamentally changing the automotive industry. Our business model is innovative and profitable: we’re creating a transparent, intelligent automotive marketplace that benefits both buyers and sellers, using technology to ensure dealers thrive and consumers get a great price. Since its launch in 2006, TrueCar has facilitated the sale of over 400,000 new and used vehicles, and works with a nationwide network of over 5,000 dealers. Our partners include some of the most prominent brands in the U.S., including Consumer Reports, AAA, USAA, GEICO, Progressive, American Express, Bank of America, U.S. Bank, Yahoo Autos, AOL Autos and U.S. News. Our acquisition strategy recently resulted in the purchase of automotive residual values industry leader ALG as well. With triple digit revenue growth and offices in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Austin, we’ve made the list of fastest growing companies for both Inc. Magazine and Los Angeles Business Journal and our growth in 2012 is expected to more than double. Now, we need more great people to help us pull off the next big thing. Join us.

Who We're Looking For: Right now, we’re looking for a Statistician/Data Mining Specialist who will work on a wide range of projects from transaction price modeling, forecasting, to multivariate testing and marketing analytics, utilize the latest technologies to solve challenging problems, create innovative applications from the ground up and understand exactly what it takes to create a reliable Web experience for our customers. Responsibilities:

• Develop statistical models to predict vehicle pricing

• Track and analyze model parameters and estimates over time

• Construct forecasts of key industry metrics

• Create implementable design specifications for product innovations

• Perform multivariate testing on website design

• Analyze and optimize search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns

• Work closely within a team of highly experienced, analytically inclined professionals

• Execute ad hoc data analyses in response to business requests

• Work cross-functionally within the organization to deliver integrated business intelligence solutions Qualifications:

• Masters or Ph.D. in Statistics, Econometrics, Operations Research, Data Mining, or Biostatistics

• 5+ years’ experience in an analytics environment

• Strong SAS programming skills

• Experience with SQL (Proc SQL, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, or MySQL)

• Solid understanding and experience with processing large data files to relational database, data warehouses, ETL, and

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 19, 2012 at 6:24am
Originally Posted by Sparkland View Post
Interesting to note that "True car" is not allowed to provide information in Colorado. They seemingly broke some of the longstanding rules (legislation) of car buying in Colorado.

This is the message that comes up when requesting quotes in Colorado from True Car:
The TrueCar service is temporarily unavailable in your area. We are unable to provide you with upfront prices from local TrueCar Certified Dealers at this time.

In the meantime, TrueCar has partnered with Autobytel to help you locate and connect with dealers in your area willing to provide you with a free price quote. Click here to visit Autobytel now.

As always, TrueCar continues to provide up-to-date market pricing to help you research your next car purchase.

Scraped from:
Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 19, 2012 at 6:18am

http://www.all4freebies.com/Truecar.com_coupon_codes

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