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...
- 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".
- 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.
- 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. - 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.
- AMEX, USAA and all of their affiliates do not want the bad consumer relations this push back is creating with their members and customers.
- 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.
- 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"
- Keep calling your National and State Dealer Associations demanding they get involved and stay involved... No excuses.
- 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.
- 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
Comment
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 23, 2012 at 11:51am -
I'm not naming a single dealer, David. At least not at this time. I don't call out dealers publicly; leads to SEO issues for them, relationship issues for them, and bad press all around. It's a bad practice. Thanks!
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Comment by David T. Gould on January 23, 2012 at 11:43am
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Time to start naming names gentlemen. I don't mean in a bad way. Wording might sound like... "I wonder if the owners of INSERT DEALER HERE are up to date with the latest information about TrueCar / ZAG... " Identifying stragglers will allow multiple sources here to reach out to confirm that ownership is aware of their exposure.
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Comment by Stan Sher on January 23, 2012 at 10:39am
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I have been working hard to get PA dealers to cancel but some are just being stubborn. I think if more then one of us tries we will succeed.
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Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 22, 2012 at 8:18am
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IRONIC....Header on TC's career opportunities page:
How much TRUTH is there in a dealers price if "someone in the middle" who see's all the prices in a region were to contact the "high" dealers and ask them to adjust their prices???? any thoughts??
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From TrueCars website today, 1-22-12 under “career opportunities”
I wonder exactly what “ Track competitor pricing and provide strategic recommendations” means????
Could it mean a rep will call or email a member to inform them they are not “competitive” in their market? …..If that is the case, Is TrueCar influencing prices?
Any thoughts?
Operations Analyst - Dealer Development
Responsibilities:
• Develop and present innovative internal and external reporting and analysis to support the Dealer Operations Team
• Interact daily with Dealers, Area Sales Managers, and Account Managers as an operations and automotive pricing expert to ensure competitive, accurate, and up-to-date dealer pricing, dealer satisfaction, and an excellent customer experience
• Assist in special projects for the Executive Management Team
• Monitor automotive and online market trends, and provide recommendations to proactively mitigate issues before they arise
• Track competitor pricing and provide strategic recommendations
• Ensure customer and dealer pricing and data accuracy across the TrueCar Programs
• Manage the data collection process for all price components including Dealer Pricing, Incentives and Rebates, and competitive data
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 22, 2012 at 7:05am
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I am speaking today to a group of more than 90 dealers and managers. It is an all day event, I am the only speaker. Last night at dinner, the dealers asked me to have lunch with the dealers only, without the managers present, to discuss TrueCar and Data Pilfering by our vendors. The overwhelming sentiment among these dealers is hostile toward TrueCar, even the few who are using them apparently hate them. Where they get all of these supposed happy dealers is rapidly beginning to look like BullCrap to me. Before I leave here tonight I feel I may have another 15 or 20 dealers ready to cancel and tell their friends to do the same. There is a growing trend as dealers get angry and get rid of these people. I am hearing that even in states they get their model reinstated, nobody (relatively) is going to participate as dealers who do business with them are becoming isolated by other dealers. I am hearing that some dealers won't even do dealer trades with them.
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A Dealer Friend of Mine sent me this message on Facebook...Jim, I just received 7 invoices from TrueCar for vehicles we did not sell. I was already in the process of cancelling, when they arrive this morning. I'm done with TrueCar in both my stores. Just wanted to get the word out to your followers to double check all invoices from TrueCar.
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If anyone has interest in expressing her/his opinion to Silicon Valley Bank about any of the principal players involved with the TC funding (Dietz), Here is some contact info....copy and paste and let them know your opinion. They need to understand what the face of GRP Partners really looks like. The more SVB understands about their "partners" the more likely they are to do the right thing, whatever it is.
To: Carrie Merritt , Public Relations, Silicon Valley Bank
Subject: Steven Dietz, Managing Partner, GRP Partners
Please forward this email to the following:
Ken Wilcox, Chairman, Silicon Valley Bank
Harry Kellogg, Vice Chairman, Silicon Valley Bank, Head of Strategic RelationshipsMark Turk, Managing Director for Silicon Valley Bank
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I picture dealers walking past their booth glaring at them...it will not be a warm reception.
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Comment by Mike Warwick on January 21, 2012 at 1:55pm
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Has there ever been more anticipation for NADA? Will Truecar actually show up? I think there will be some "spirited" discussions this year.
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