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 Larry Muirhead on December 17, 2011 at 5:18pm
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@ Jerry Thibeau - Hey Jerry, you know what makes it worse? I lowered the price of our Camry yesterday to get closer to the LOSER deals that my compeditor feels compeled to offer. Before lowing the price, we were $500 MORE than my competition within 60 miles. Today I look and they lowered their price again on the 2012 Camrys. WHY!!!!!! We were already allowing them to be the cheapest in the land and they still had to whore down the price even more. What is wrong with these people?
Even when I quit using TrueCar, we will still have the battle of people printing out their "Steal a car Truecar licence" and pressure the store to comply. I applaud HONDA.
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Comment by Jerry Thibeau on December 17, 2011 at 4:45pm
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Nice Larry! What would be even better is if you sent ZAG/TrueCar a cancellation letter.
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We now have a separate Email Template for ZAG.
It shows how much the discount is along with the disclaimer which indicates that ZAG/TrueCar charges the Dealership $299 for new and $399 for Pre-owned purchases and that these Truecar fees will be charged as a broker fee and must be present in the transaction.
~ In the spirt of transparency that is ~
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 17, 2011 at 3:30pm
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Will this Blog get 30,000 page views now that it's passed 20,000?
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Comment by Michael Deville on December 17, 2011 at 3:15pm
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Lets get this right. Truecar cares about the consumer, if so, why are they not taking the broker fee from the consumer. The reason is the consumer is not going to pay them. So they care about being transparent with collecting our money and turning our customers against us.
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The logical action for TrueCar to overcome the "kill the beast" movement is to turn on the advertising machine in an attempt to drive lots of consumer traffic to their site. I am starting to see a lot of TrueCar advertisements in my travels. This is going to get ugly. Dealers in competitive markets are going to brutalize one another. The ads show customers saving thousands of dollars, who wouldn't check it out if shopping for a vehicle. This is going to get really big and it's going to happen really fast if dealers don't stop now!
Dealers in rural areas who say that they are making money with TrueCar won't be making money when/if more dealers start using the tool.
If the beast grows, dealers are going to become profit stressed and we'll see a reduction in dealers across the country. There is no doubt in my mind that this will happen. Eventually dealers and manufacturers will be forced to go with one price shopping. This strategy would eliminate an environment where TrueCar could prosper.
For vendors watching this unfold from the sidelines, this won't be good for us either? Fewer dealerships mean less opportunities for all of us. We all need to be united and spread the word about TrueCar.
As always -- Kill The Beast!
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 17, 2011 at 2:55pm -
The TrueHeart of TrueCar in transparency . . .
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Look at this dealer, wow, worried about the dealer down the street, and not about his future. This type of management is the cause and development of third party leads. Is unable to get his own customer. GET YOUR OWN CUSTOMER!
"If I don't participate the next guy down the street will and sell 40 or 50 units more," said Jae Park, general manager of Keye Hyundai in Van Nuys. "I have to make TrueCar work out or else I am going to be left behind."
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 17, 2011 at 1:54pm
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What transparency would mean to the TrueHeart of TrueCar:
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Comment by Mike Warwick on December 17, 2011 at 1:40pm
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How ironic is it that an Internet company that espouses transparency is being hammered because the curtain got pulled back on their operation!
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