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 Michael Paulson on January 21, 2012 at 12:30pm
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@Jim in reference to: Jim: Your opinion on how I manage my personal business has little merit considering how poorly you've managed your own personal life. I have enough class not to post this publicly.
I have to agree with Steven Dietz. He has a lot of class......Too bad it's all low. What a weasel! I'm so glad that you took this away from him. What's next? Are you going to find a horse head in your bed? Desperate measures for desperate times I guess.
Keep up the good work. I hope that he ghosts this thread today to see the kind of support that you have here.
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Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 21, 2012 at 10:32am
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Comment by Al Mosher on January 21, 2012 at 7:57am
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OK, we all know Scott Painter has been shown to have no class and no integrity. Now we clearly see the same kind of scurrilous behavior from Steven Dietz of GRP Partners. I understand trying to protect the 200 million that GRP has invested in TrueCar but to stoop to the level of personal attacks on Jim's family is reprehensible. The only good new is that I'm pretty sure it will come back to bite him in the ass.
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on January 21, 2012 at 7:41am -
WOW......that is a sad turn of events to start bringing family issues into a discussion of a business world scenario.
I am disgusted with the entire TrueCar-GRP world.....
I am just SO shocked...I don't know what to say....
DISGUSTING....just DISGUSTING......
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Comment by Stanley Esposito on January 20, 2012 at 9:43pm
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I watch this thread everyday. I even made a separate folder on my outlook so the emails would not clog up my inbox. I was thinking to myself that things have slowed up over the last 2 days. The boys at truecar and their investors keep shooting themselves in the foot! First the domain names now they top that by bringing family into it. It is like they don't want this to die down. How can anyone invest in this company?
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Comment by Heather Graham on January 20, 2012 at 8:12pm
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Truly amazing - it really is hard to believe that someone would dig up info on your son Jim. Thx for exposing!
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Comment by Shannon Page on January 20, 2012 at 8:10pm
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Integrity. Out the window. Shameful.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 20, 2012 at 6:49pm
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@ Steven: Man the Truecar booth at NADA and I assure you that you will get plenty of verbal feedback on you and Truecar now. Family ... well, many of us spent years sacrificing for their good. Lots of Saturdays. Selling. Our rule is you can get personal with a peer ... but not about family. You.and Truecar are about to find out exactly what the open NADA floor thinks of you.
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 20, 2012 at 6:23pm
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My wife, my son Zachary and I are all sitting here right now discussing it.
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Comment by Mike Warwick on January 20, 2012 at 6:11pm
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Well, the gloves are off now. Bravo Jim for taking his threat and throwing it in his face. One of the greatest strengths of the car business is that we give good people a chance to make a great living even if they have made a mistake or two in their lives. This j****** thinks a 21 year old driving on a suspended license is a big deal? What a clown. Completely out of touch. Truecar may need Blackwater to handle their security at NADA. These people are lower than whale sh*t. Tighten up those chin straps and put in your mouth pieces, this just went to a whole other level. I'm in Jim, anything you need, you got it!
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