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 James A. Ziegler on November 29, 2011 at 8:56pm
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Comment by Stanley Esposito on November 29, 2011 at 8:49pm
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I posted on Linkedin as well. It has been tweeted too. I will do my part. I think this may have been the reason Al Gore invented the internet!
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on November 29, 2011 at 8:46pm -
I will post this blog in the 50 different automotive groups I belong to on LinkedIn with a STRONG attention grabbing headline......I also have over 1500 connections on LinkedIn.....I will group e-mail this blog out to them also.....
KILL THE BEAST!!
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Comment by Joe Clementi on November 29, 2011 at 8:35pm
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@Jim I have posted this blog on my LinkedIn account as well as my Dealer Academy and Honda Groups. We need this message sent to everyone we can. Momentum is key. Dealers speak to one another throughout the day and I know our market place is a buzz about this topic. Hopefully the 4 dealers in my market out of the 6,000 or so dealers get this message loud and clear. KILL the beast.
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on November 29, 2011 at 8:16pm
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@James Carroll.......I have not posted this blog on LinkedIn as of yet.....BUT....I most certainly will tomorrow!!
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Comment by James Carroll on November 29, 2011 at 8:13pm
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@Jim Kristoff Have you posted any of this on blogs on LinkedIn? You seem to be pretty well known on the Auto blogs there.
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Comment by Michael Deville on November 29, 2011 at 7:18pm
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Merge the old with the new, I'm not scared of change, but theftcar is not change. It's criminal based on the laws the dealers have to follow. Undisclosed referral fees too.
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on November 29, 2011 at 7:14pm
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THIS is worth re-posting.....again and again and again................
- Comment by James A. Ziegler 5 minutes ago
KILL THE BEAST...
Cancel all contracts with any company who mines your data and exposes your transaction prices...and warn your friends
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KILL THE BEAST...
Cancel all contracts with any company who mines your data and exposes your transaction prices...and warn your friends
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Comment by Craig Darling on November 29, 2011 at 7:02pm
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Social Media... gets around this. (I personally just ignore ZAG, True Car and even most "lead" providers.)
The old fashioned connections with people make the difference. It's is old school in a new way. If you really take the time to engage prospects... they don't shop, and if they do and you are fair.. you are going to make the deal. Many folks are really turned off by the "lowest" price... hey if they are not... let them go.. the higher the gross, the higher the CSI... the more referrals.
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