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 David T. Gould on February 1, 2012 at 3:08pm

Thank you Jamie Stockman for your post 

http://www.jamiestockman.com/2012/01/important-truecar-update.html

I reposted here as full letter to avoid losing with link dying... There is much more here... Thanks again Thomas.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Important TrueCar Update

For those on True Car or those that have already cancelled their services. This was just sent out: 



[http://www.up0.net/content/666900/TrueCar-Header.jpg] 
Dear TrueCar Dealer Partner, 
TrueCar has made significant changes to how we operate in your state. High-level changes listed immediately below; detail provided further below. 


1. Regulatory Compliance 
2. Manufacturer Brand Compliance 
3. Revised "Dealer-Friendly" Dealer Agreement 
4. More Clarity on How We Use DMS Data 

Executing New Dealer Agreement 
Please review the TrueCar Dealer Master Terms and Conditions and Service Termsa href="http://www.up0.net/c.html?rtr=on&s=eal0,pdbf,1fu1,jx6s,6e52,k9ds,l5c0">http://www.up0.net/c.html?rtr=on&s=eal0,pdbf,1fu1,jx6s,6e52,k9d...> for participating dealers in your state. Your Area Sales Manager will be emailing to you the electronic registration form you need to complete and send back to TrueCar in order for the revised agreement to become effective. 

Thank you for your patience and support. We look forward to expanding our partnership with dealer customers like you. 

Sincerely, 

TrueCar Dealer Development Team 
(866) 480-1313 
________________________________ 

Details on TrueCar Changes 

1. Regulatory Compliance 

We are aware of communications from either dealer associations or regulators in various states regarding either potential advertising or brokering concerns regarding the TrueCar service. To quickly and fully address any possible regulatory issues, we are temporarily switching to a "Target Price" website experience across the United States. "Target Price" is TrueCar's estimate of what a customer can reasonably expect to pay for the vehicle as configured. This estimate is based on TrueCar's analysis of anonymous pricing data from data aggregators, and is adjusted as market conditions change. By switching to Target Pricing, TrueCar is providing market information, not a dealer's specific pricing, and is not advertising on behalf of the dealer. Each dealer sets and controls its own pricing, and TrueCar is in no way involved in arranging or negotiating a sale or procuring a vehicle. Each dealer will communicate its specific pricing and actual inventory directly to the customer after the customer has submitted their contact info to the dealer through the TrueCar service. We believe that with these changes the TrueCar service is fully compliant with the applicable laws in your state. 

In the near future, we will be relaunching an updated upfront guaranteed savings website experience that maintains the upfront guaranteed savings that TrueCar Dealers and their customers want, and includes other changes that reflect dealer feedback and address potential advertising issues in some states. TrueCar dealer partners have told us how important upfront guaranteed savings are because customers prefer upfront guaranteed savings, which increases dealer discoverability, earns customer trust and reduces dealership costs. For these reasons, upfront guaran
Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 1, 2012 at 2:44pm

1) Without the DMS access, their patent is harder to enforce and far less valuable.  Ooops for them.

2) There is absolutely some real reason beyond #1 for which they need this DMS data.  Or they wouldn't be trying so hard to keep it.

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 1, 2012 at 2:30pm

There is no dealer friendly need to access data on a flat fee.It serves only to aid TC....our data is valuable why would you give it to anyone and receive nothing in return?

I am still waiting for TC to "adjust" their "flat fee" and the end of the quarter to reflect the number of units delivered the previous quarter...TCs council tried to float that at the Virginia hearing and was cut off by a council member saying..."if it looks like a duck....." That would be a good reason to look at the DMS if that is still there plan...

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 1, 2012 at 2:20pm

Eric...absolutely correct on every point you make....it is the combination of what they get from your DMS (and they only need a tiny slice) that is then compared to other data available to them and it is re- assembled and bingo...everything you ever wanted to know about John Doe all on one page...the software is there and in place....and it is not just TC....As Keith says...FLAT FEE =.NO NEED FOR DMS ACCESS .

Comment by Andrew Myers on February 1, 2012 at 2:18pm

Kill the data kill the snake.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 1, 2012 at 2:10pm

@ Eric:  Exactly.  There's no need for the data in a flat-fee situation.  Kill that connection!

Comment by David T. Gould on February 1, 2012 at 1:33pm

How naive do they think we are? 

TrueCar is securing the data through business partners that ARE accessing consumer data... Note: I am not as confident today about the consumer's rights being retained after they release them to get the quote.

From statement below: directly from TrueCar...

"What DMS Data is NOT Used For 


* TrueCar does not use dealer DMS data to populate the pricing curves." They suggest NOW that they do not extract the data DIRECTLY... DATA AGGREGATERS / AFFILIATES / PARTNERS are grabbing it for them.
"* TrueCar does not use dealer DMS data to contact or otherwise market to customers. " WE have seen example after example of lead information being sold from TrueCar. Pure Nonsense.
"* TrueCar never sells or shares dealer DMS data." DITTO TO ABOVE

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 1, 2012 at 1:29pm
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Get the and !

MAGAZINE

January 2012 - Feature

Updated: True Controversy

TrueCar is taking fire from dealers, trainers and state motor vehicle boards, but its embattled founder says the company will survive.

By Gregory Arroyo

http://www.fi-magazine.com/Article/Story/2012/01/True-Controversy/P...

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 1, 2012 at 1:03pm

Important TrueCar Update

For those on True Car or those that have already cancelled their services. This was just sent out:




"Dear TrueCar Dealer Partner,
TrueCar has made significant changes to how we operate in your state. High-level changes listed immediately below; detail provided further below."

Link to entire blog post:

http://www.jamiestockman.com/2012/01/important-truecar-update.html

Comment by David T. Gould on January 31, 2012 at 8:42am

Painter will jump ship... that is what he does.

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