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 Stan Sher on November 29, 2011 at 1:05pm

@Jerry, great video.  I actually agree with you on this buddy.  Thanks for what you do for the industry.

Comment by James A. Ziegler on November 29, 2011 at 1:04pm

This is fantastic. AND, yes Joe, it will not stop here. I am currently consulting more than 90 corporations that own dealerships... some have one store some have 30 franchises... I write for two magazines and two high auto membership blogs... more than 100 dealer 20-groups,  I have been the keynote speaker for 79 state automobile dealer association annual conventions and have presented workshops at 11 NADA Conventions... with many speeches coming...  I don't mind vendors helping dealers get traffic BUT what we're seeing here is a war against auto dealers... Look for me to become increasingly vocal.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 29, 2011 at 1:03pm

Jerry, your video is VERY interesting . . .

Devin, I know you've got 24 pages to go through and (hopefully) a response to the thread ala your profile "I'm a TrueCar.com employee and can offer a response to many of the misconceptions and flat-out lies about our website and auto buying programs."  I'd say it's going to be a tough audience, but here's your chance!

Thanks.

Comment by Chad Collier on November 29, 2011 at 12:56pm

@Keith Thanks!

@Stanley and Joe. Bashing dealers was the furthest from my intentions. I was simply trying to state the fact that in this day and age there are definitely customers that have ridiculous expectations on what they want to pay but many times there is an opportunity there for profit if we dig enough. I guess I overstated this in my comments.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 29, 2011 at 12:47pm

@ All:  Just to put it this way, I don't think Chad meant it that way.  There have been plenty of folks on here telling us to "game up" . . . in these 24 pages, and I took what he wrote that way.  Not anti-dealer, but pro-business.  I do wish he had been less adamant at this point of the process, but hey ...

Comment by Jerry Thibeau on November 29, 2011 at 12:46pm

I had a some free time on my hands last night, so I thought I would make a little video regarding this matter.  Hope you enjoy,

Comment by Stanley Esposito on November 29, 2011 at 12:34pm

@Chad,

Below is a quote from your post where I think you are bashing dealers. Did you or did you not post the below comments?

 

"I can't stand to hear a manager say those people were just ridiculous an didn't want to pay anything and will never be happy. Most of the time this manager listened to the salesman tell him that these people were tire kickers or jacks and went along with it and let the customer go without a TO. I know everyone of you on here run the highest grosses and  are King Kong closers but some of you need a dose of reality and look in the mirror when pointing the finger. A strong desk manager can run a high GPVR and get all he can on every deal small and big, not just pass on the small and take the big ones. That is weak. Find a way to make money on a nothing deal."

Comment by Joe Clementi on November 29, 2011 at 12:30pm

@Chad-  This is the part that I felt was an absolute dig on the dealer as the issue at hand. 

Don't let GPVR be an excuse for being a sorry closer. I can't stand to hear a manager say those people were just ridiculous an didn't want to pay anything and will never be happy. Most of the time this manager listened to the salesman tell him that these people were tire kickers or jacks and went along with it and let the customer go without a TO. I know everyone of you on here run the highest grosses and  are King Kong closers but some of you need a dose of reality and look in the mirror when pointing the finger. A strong desk manager can run a high GPVR and get all he can on every deal small and big, not just pass on the small and take the big ones. That is weak. Find a way to make money on a nothing deal."

Comment by Chad Collier on November 29, 2011 at 12:27pm

@Joe you obviously did not read my post or any of my others.I am not a TrueCar advocate. I clearly stated that I did not agree with the pricing on the web. "I don't agree with the upfront price on the web and making the dealer compete in that regard" I do not agree with dealers listing these prices on a third party website and given to the consumer in that regard. I believe price should be given at the dealership. I absolutely do not agree that dealers should give these prices online.

The simple fact is 6,000 dealers are giving TrueCar these prices. Not through a DMS feed but by entering into the zag system what they will sell their cars for. Those 6,000 dealers should train their staff on how to price those cars on TrueCars site and how to handle the customer when they do get there. If the Dealer has to post their prices at a $200 net loser to compete in their market then they should not participate in TrueCar.

 I am not sure which part of my post you thought was bashing dealers.

Comment by Stanley Esposito on November 29, 2011 at 12:21pm

@Chad,

So the 6000 dealers pay for the privilege to train salesman on true car customers and how to make something out of nothing? They better train them well enough to recoup the fee truecar charges. Bottom line is 6000 dealers are paying money for a service that is not in their best interest.

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