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
-
Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 6, 2011 at 5:37pm -
The second leg of the TrueCar beast is now LIVE, this one going after your used car business: ClearBook.
CUT THEM OUT OF YOUR DMS **NOW**! REVOLUTIONS DON'T WAIT!
-
Comment by John McAdams on December 6, 2011 at 4:19pm
-
Look at what has happened in just 10 days! It is truly a revolution. Jim, every dealer should have a copy of that letter.
-
Comment by A. J. Maida on December 6, 2011 at 3:56pm
-
Eric absolutely correct...people you should be able to see a csv or txt or exl file of what is being sent in all your exports and check it at least once a qtr??
-
-
and the revolt is gaining steam...that said how often have you seen a football team garner a lead then go into the prevent defense only to lose the game....lets keep the foot on the gas people. Share Jerry's video in all your social networks...lets get this thing onto page one for any unTruthful Car searches!!!!
Here the link just to save you time...hit the share on FaceBook and Twitter on all your pages and profiles!!!!!
-
Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 6, 2011 at 3:22pm
-
@ Jim: It doesn't take TrueCar to stop the DMS access. Dealers across the nation, including this one, need only get their IT/DMS personnel to 100% revoke the access that was given. They can send the cancellation letter afterward . . .
REVOLUTIONS DON'T WAIT!
-
Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 6, 2011 at 3:18pm
-
Letter one of my Dealers wrote to TrueCar Rep...I'll save you the trouble of having to try to reach me tomorrow.Since being on the program, we've seen very little conversion of the leads to sales. When we speak to most customers, they are somewhat put off by our immediate attempts to follow up and in some cases are confused as to why we are even trying to contact them. Typically, when a lead source generates these type of leads they are pushing aggressively mined customer data rather than viable leads.To compound issues, the fee charged for the leads when a deal is reached is often a substantial financial loss to the dealership, which makes no sense and is a drain on the morale of a sales force already forced to make livings on historically low manufacturer margins. We deliver a superb buying experience and location, I deserve to make a fair profit. If your pricing models were more in line with other purchase programs (Costco/Sams, etc) AND the leads were of any quality, I would still want to be onboard.Lastly, after spending some quality time with Jim Ziegler in our dealership last week, I was educated about the TrueCar business model, the people at the top of the organization and how combative to the already thin dealership profit model your service is becoming. I simply don't trust your company enough to release access to MY transactional data in our DMS.In conclusion, I think a lot of this could have been prevented if True car had not lost sight of who its customer is, the dealer, and been more of advocate of fair margins and dealer ratings than exaggerated price quotes from conveniently obscure data set.Please process our termination and discard any access to our DMS immediately.Thank you,XXXXXXXXXXXX SignatureXXXXXX
-
Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 6, 2011 at 3:14pm
-
hits the "like" button!!!!!
__________________________
Comment by James A. Ziegler 27 seconds ago
THIS BLOG IS NOT A DISCUSSION...NOR IS IT A DEBATE...IT IS A REVOLUTION
-
-
THIS BLOG IS NOT A DISCUSSION...NOR IS IT A DEBATE...IT IS A REVOLUTION
-
-
I am working the State Dealer Association Executives to take action and I'm getting some serious traction.... I am more than a little concerned about the number of vendors that are data-mining dealers customers information beyond that which is necessary... and I believe in violation of federal privacy laws. More and more dealers have invoicing disputes and TrueCar is evidently not the poster child for good customer service...
-
© 2024 Created by DealerELITE.
Powered by
You need to be a member of DealerELITE.net to add comments!
Join DealerELITE.net