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 Keith Shetterly on January 30, 2012 at 3:54pm

Thanks Heather!  :)

Comment by Heather Graham on January 30, 2012 at 2:32pm

Nice article Keith! Thx for sharing!

Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 30, 2012 at 2:08pm

I'm sorry, let me put my Wards article in here the right way:  Wards: My Business Case Against TrueCar.  "...there are dealers who ask if TrueCar can help them increase car sales. Here’s why I think it doesn’t."

Comment by Mike Warwick on January 30, 2012 at 12:49pm

I like the comparison with the Titanic as Scott Painter and crew are the band that keeps playing while the ship slips into the ocean.  It will be interesting to see if he pulls a disappearing act like the Italian Cruise Liner captain and jumps into a lifeboat while others go down with the ship. 

Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 30, 2012 at 12:46pm
Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 30, 2012 at 12:14pm

Which one sank faster?
a) Titanic 
b) Truecar

Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 30, 2012 at 7:40am

I am proud that I was able to catalyst this movement and give it momentum. We are meeting with several at the convention who are developing technology and a game plan to lock down all dealer data and then license it field-by-field to those vendors that really need it and  then giving them only the specific information they need. 

The next step will be litigation of any vendor that oversteps their use of the data or takes data they are not entitled to. I predict dealers will fire vendors that refuse to take offending language out of their contracts no matter how big or important that vendor perceives themselves to be. 

There is some serious fireworks coming directly after the NADA Convention that should put more rain on TrueCar's parade. 

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 29, 2012 at 8:33pm

Thanks David, good info....

Comment by David T. Gould on January 29, 2012 at 8:28pm

Direct from TrueCar.com (lower left)

"Availability

icon

The dealer-provided price will be for a vehicle in stock."

Then, directly below in light barely readable print... "Unless otherwise noted, all vehicles shown on this website are offered for sale by licensed motor vehicle dealers, which may not have the exact new vehicle you configured in inventory."


Is it any wonder why TrueCar users are not happy? This is another example of TrueCar double speak. 

Side note, closest TrueCar dealership to us is over 50 miles. Toyota TrueCar quote (certificate) for Philadelphia area reflected much more realistic pricing than one month ago. These efforts are having more of an effect than TrueCar is letting on.

Keep up the good fight. The Data Wars must be won!

Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 28, 2012 at 5:41pm

Sorry, I have been a little absent from this thread recently. 

This coming week I am speaking at Brian Pasch's DMSC  Boot Camp in Las Vegas and Then, the following week, I am a featured speaker at The NADA Convention.

We have some really great surprises scheduled for the TrueCar Folks at the Convention... Right now, they are flailing about in their death throes and I predict they'll be experiencing a lot more pain after the convention. 

They're bravely trying to act publicly as if TrueCar is viable and alive when everyone can see it's dying.  Painter's been here before and he can feel it coming. I am amazed that anyone would back him on any business project considering his track record. 

The way I see it, the Investment World appears to be backing off of TrueCar because of all the negatives brought to light and the magnification of the company's apparent inane mismanagement.

Speaking of mismanagement, I believe GRP Partners is also looking really-really bad here, at least that's the way I perceive it to be. After all they are the financial backers that raised the money to bring this circus sideshow into the market with TrueCar Management and GRP Partners' Investment Advice resembling the antics of the crazy midgets in "Clown Cars" under the Big Top. 

They (GRP Partners) and particularly TrueCar must be rapidly becoming a ridiculous joke in the financial community... and GRP Partners, a long time respected firm must be getting their fair share of ridicule because of this train wreck, which I am assuming was probably Steven Dietz's brainchild. I am picturing the possibility that he's likely to have been the butt of more than a few jokes around the water coolers in the financial community. Needham LLC must have been an embarrassment to GRP Partners and TrueCar as well. Go to www.GRPPartners.com and check it out.

I am just wondering how AMEX and USAA are feeling about being associated with the tarnished reputation TrueCar is bringing to them as well? 

I don't know about GRP Partners command structure, maybe Steve Dietz is the man there BUT I am wondering if the board of directors or the other partners are seeing him as a liability? Just conjecture, mind you, but if it was my company, his position might be standing on a banana peel. When it it was revealed that TrueCar's basic business model violated a number of states' laws, doesn't that smack of total incompetency of all concerned considering it was a $200 Million-dollar crap-shoot? Where was the high-school level due diligence?

It seems to me that if someone in their right mind had millions to invest how could they possibly consider this farce?

How can Scott Painter and Steven Dietz possibility save face considering the continuing series of apparently conspicuous screw-ups they've committed in their business plan reminiscent of a Three Stooges Slapstick comedy. ? Of course I could be totally off track in my thinking here, maybe I'm wrong. I am just thinking out loud about possibilities and possible scenarios. 

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