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 Thomas A. Kelly on March 19, 2012 at 7:18pm
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Tammy put it in pretty simple terms David and worth repeating....endlessly:
"................NOT do business with 3rd parties whose business premises is "Dealers are Crooks and We're Here to Save you from Them."
I like Tammy...Grady, not so much. Thanks David.
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Comment by David Ruggles on March 19, 2012 at 7:05pm -
In Tammy Darvish's presentation at the Conference of Automotive ReMarketing in Las Vegas last week she gave TrueCar a little shot, urging Dealers to NOT do business with 3rd parties whose business premises is "Dealers are Crooks and We're Here to Save you from Them."
Ms. Darvish received a Standing O for her contributions to the industry. It was telling she was not speaking on the same day as Pete Grady, the man most Chrysler Dealers believe responsible for who was "shot in the head" and who wasn't. But then a few people think it was the President. I'm pretty sure Darvish and Grady aren't on speaking terms.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on March 19, 2012 at 6:44pm
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@ Thomas: You are the E.F. Hutton of the Car Biz. You don't say much too often, but when you do, people listen . . . ;)
I do love the car pics on fb, btw.
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I agree.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on March 19, 2012 at 6:27pm
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@ Thomas: There's a lot of modernization this business needs, in my opinion. If it wasn't for Painter and his direction against dealers (in my opinion) and the data issues, I would've enjoyed working for that modernization and perhaps TrueCar would've been it. There's just no way for me with those items, or for people like me or like you, but regardless maybe this dealer association guy can get them changed somehow. Mouthpiece . . . they don't need another mouthpiece. Mr. Watson better deliver many actual changes, or this will be a huge PR mistake.
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New position at TrueCar:
http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120319/RETAIL0...
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on March 10, 2012 at 6:27pm
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TrueCar sponsoring Digital Dealer Conference is sort of like Charles Manson showing up at a Sharon Tate Memorial service...my opinion based on common human decency of course...
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I wonder if dealers ostracizing dealers that whore out and do business with them. I have heard some dealers will not do a dealer trade with a TrueCar dealer.
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Pleased and not surprised...Now RLTV needs to do a show "Why dealers will not have anything to do with TrueCar"
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Just informed that RLTV/NBC new show Cash Call with Jean Chatzky approached dealers on Long Island about doing a show how seniors could save money buying a car. When it was announced TrueCar was participating, so far every dealer has turned them down.
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