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 Keith Shetterly on December 17, 2011 at 11:06am -
True-Milk in the DMS
True-Milk in the DMS
Hi Ho, the Merry-Oh
True-Milk in the DMS!
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 17, 2011 at 11:05am
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I just got off the phone with one of the most powerful CPA firms in the country that has some of the Largest Dealer groups...highly influential... watch what's going down as another shoe drops.
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My God! What if TrueMilk got into the Farmer's DMS?
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 17, 2011 at 11:01am
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@ Mike: Same milk from the same cow sent to St. Louis is $3.25 but in Houston is $3.57. www.TrueMilk.com. Wouldn't that be fair to the consumer??
Come to think of it, it appears the price of B.S. in Santa Monica has dropped lower in zip code 90401 than even in Congress at zip code 20001. Which is saying something, considering we are about to enter an election year.
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Mike, now your being trivial... all milk would be $.99 if had printed out your "TrueMilk" certificate
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Comment by Mike Warwick on December 17, 2011 at 10:54am
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Gallon of milk at Market Basket - $2.99. Gallon of milk at Stop and Shop - $3.89.
24% price distribution for the same product at businesses located less than a half mile apart.
When can we expect Truemilk.com to address this outrage?
Oh, I forgot. I can choose where I shop and pricing is readily available. Same as the car business.
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Thanks for joining us John...
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Comment by John McAdams on December 17, 2011 at 10:27am
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Good read here. I sell against Honda everyday and I have a new found respect for them. Notice at the end it says Truce Cars revenues will be $100 million for 2011. This is about greed and one mans arrogance.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/15/business/la-fi-autos-honda-...
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 17, 2011 at 10:22am
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@ Mike, when I had the call (which is now in my "Tear Down This Wall!" blog), I asked why would I care that a car in Houston is offered cheaper in St. Louis??? Scott speaks "investor" very well . . . "car guy" or "reality of the market", well, not so much.
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I know Mr. Painter is a smart guy so I'm a little confused by some of his stances. He claims the same vehicle should have the same price no matter where you purchase it. So an Audi A4 in Dubuque IA should cost the same as an A4 in Manhatten? Do these dealers have the same expense structures? Does property in NY cost the same as Iowa? Does the dealer pay the same in taxes? Do the employees have the same pay scales? He claims that there is a 23% price distribution. Wouldn't that make sense? What's the distribution of pay scales, home prices, gas prices and all of the other price indicators across the US? I know that he would say that Truecar finds that price distribution in the same market but I am HIGHLY dubious of that claim. Show me a dealer that is selling a vehicle at a 23% higher price than their competition. You are talking about a $4600 spread on a $20,000 car! I price shop every week for seven brands in the metro-Boston market and the average price difference is less than $800 across all of these brands with all of our competitors. Please show me the customer that is paying $2300 more than the average.
Isn't this the same guy that said there are 38,000 franchise dealers in the US?! Umm, what year was that? For someone who has been in this business for 20 years, that seems like a ridiculous mistake to make. If there were that many dealers, I would agree that there are too many. Last I checked, the number is half that. There are about 200,000,000 registered drivers in the US and less than 20,000 franchise dealers or one dealership for every 10,000 registered drivers. Doesn't seem like a lot to me.
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