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 December 7, 2011 at 4:16pm
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We've read a lot of posts on this blog saying, or at least insinuating, that TrueCar probably is sharing crucial customer data with other entities that are not related to their purpose for being in the data in the first place...we've also seen and heard they've pulled data far beyond what they need if their intent was honorable, at least that's the way I view and interpret it anyway (I might be wrong).
When a customer buys a car from a dealership, under federal privacy guidelines do they have a reasonable expectation their personal information is NOT available to third parties who may in turn share it with fourth and fifth parties????
I have heard from sources I believe to be reliable that they DO NOT access AutoNation's DMS but instead are provided data by AutoNation....
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Comment by Anthony Sanchez on December 7, 2011 at 2:41pm -
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Everyone reading this please send me a friend request so I can send you the private message newsletter with the strategies and secret stuff we're doing behind the scenes. JIM
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 7, 2011 at 12:06pm
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Let's understand ClearBook: It's not about the price. Their "trade-in" price is "Powered by Black Book" . . . anyway, this service just launched Dec 6 (that was Monday). It wouldn't surprise me at all to see some changes in the future--the original announcement about ClearBook did NOT mention Black Book . . . it mentioned actual sales transactional data being the basis. Funny how that apparently changed . . . for now . . .
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Everyone reading this please send me a friend request so I can send you the private message newsletter with the strategies and secret stuff we're doing behind the scenes. JIM
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Comment by Michael Deville on December 7, 2011 at 10:59am
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By prioritizing TrueCar-referred customers, Certified Dealers can move more metal while also improving margins. Are we serious???
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READ THIS: I sincerely hope our Dealer Association does not do a deal with TrueCar.
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Comment by Kevin Nachbar on December 7, 2011 at 10:46am
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James, when the #'s are fair I will present them to the customer when they are not I will search a 250 mile radius for the customer to validate my price if there is not a better value the consumer will pay fair market value. Don't get me wrong I don't like what TrueCar is all about. I will win I have no choice. I was taught a long time ago to control what I can control and don't worry about he things you can't. I want to be transparent in the way I do busines. I am having great success with this philosphy. I show the customer original condition reports on the vehicle's that I buy at auction I have nothing to hide. Customers will pay fair market value you just have to validate your price.
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Thanks Kevin, first time I've heard a positive on Clear Book pricing... and if the margins are decent, I want this to be forum to be fair, although; I personally extremely dislike what these people are doing. There is a distinct possibility they may adjust the figures upward temporarily thinking the heat we're putting on will die down. Then, once the coast is clear, they will ramp up the bloodbath figures again. My view on them is they are not to be trusted to do the decent thing for dealers.
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 7, 2011 at 10:02am
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@Jerry.....200 million worth of "big sticks" can be outdone by 15,000 dealers "unplugging" TrueCar from their DMS and cancelling their contracts.......then TrueCar can take that big stick and.............................
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