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 Scott Falcone on March 4, 2012 at 5:06pm

@ Mike, the poison in this well runs deep and the lies and stories spun by other TC employees have left the dealer community more then leary of TC. Those that stayed on were either in the dark, in denial, didn't care because they were selling cars, or some combo of all three. I do not speak for the dealer community, but as a member of it.  

I believe it was Keith who shared the story of the Scorpion and the Frog...perhaps the company should consider changing their name and personnel to something other than Scorpion I mean True Car if they are really looking for a fresh start. 

Comment by Michael Timmons on March 4, 2012 at 5:02pm

@Keith  Yes, we hope to have several of them in use by DD but will also be showing and getting feedback on additional dealer products in development.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on March 4, 2012 at 4:58pm

@ Mike:  Will you be making announcements at DD around those tool changes?

Comment by Michael Timmons on March 4, 2012 at 4:52pm

I respect the position of the members on this forum that believe TRUECar, as an organization, didn't always act in the best interest of auto dealers profitability. I know many mistakes were made but the company has been focusing on their dealer tools and unquestionably provides some of the best dealer leads in the industry. With companies like USAA, American Express, Consumer Reports, AAA, Geico, Yahoo and over 80 additional partners, TC dealers are selling over 20,000 vehicles a month.

Our dealer count is down considerably from a few months ago but the dealers that have remained on the TRUECAR program have significantly increased their sales because our lead volume continues to increase. We need to do a better job at giving dealers tools that assist them with pricing guidelines and not tools designed to force undue price competition. We are working on this and I believe that Digital Dealer is a great place to showcase some of the new tools and also listen to any additional input the dealer community has to offer. I believe that our sponsorship and willingness to engage the industry in a more dealer centric environment is long overdue and I am personally looking forward to the event. Hope to see you at our booth.

Comment by James A. Ziegler on March 4, 2012 at 1:12pm

There is a lot of commentary on the Blogs and my FaceBook page already... I think my feelings are known, but because of my personal bad blood issues between Digital Dealer and I; I am not going to comment on the fact they've accepted TrueCar as a Main Sponsor. 
I will just read what others say.

Comment by James A. Ziegler on March 4, 2012 at 10:09am

Amazing... What do you think about Digital Dealer Conference having TrueCar as one of their main sponsors? 

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on March 1, 2012 at 7:14pm

TrueCar's follow-up email to me, 4 weeks after my last mystery shop...asking ME to report my purchase

Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 28, 2012 at 6:57pm
Jim is very right about that link.
Comment by Jay Prassel on February 28, 2012 at 6:21pm

@George, you are absolutely correct, it is the dealer's responsibility. This bill, if it should ever get passed, changes nothing. Dealers need to "lock down" their data, limit access and make sure they have compliant Privacy Notices in place.

Comment by George O'Sullivan on February 28, 2012 at 6:07pm

@James I think the announcement by the administration makes it very clear.  It is the Collector of the data's (i.e. the dealer's) responsibility to secure the data.  Any failure to do so is going to put us at fault, and we (as you have been telling us) are going to be the ones held responsible.

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