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 Jim Kristoff on December 3, 2011 at 12:32pm -
knocking on 12,000 views.......
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 3, 2011 at 12:29pm
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THANK YOU JERRY!
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Comment by Jerry Thibeau on December 3, 2011 at 12:26pm
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Okay, made private only.
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 3, 2011 at 12:26pm
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I agree with Keith.......take the video down to public viewing......make the new one directed at the consumer......
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 3, 2011 at 12:08pm
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As strongly as I can, I advise dropping that video into private. Don't have faith in the consumer understanding it's meant for car people.
I know you know dealers and how to capture their attention. If you're going to focus on consumers, that's a whole other beast. Short attention span and fickle, and they have decades of prejudice against dealers. Don't feed that beast while we're trying to kill this one.
Thanks for all you do, though! You really speak well to the dealer body.
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News Flash!
I am going to leave the video up for now. We will replace that video with another video geared to a TrueCar consumer. Below is the message I will deliver in that video. I am sharing it with you since I would like your feedback on any edits we should make. If anyone can think of a better way to deliver this message to the consumer, I am all ears. I’ll try and get this shot on Monday morning and edited by Monday evening. Here’s the video message:
“Welcome, you’re probably here because you’re wondering if TrueCar is that easy and will I get as great of a deal as they claim. Well you know that saying “if it’s too good to be true, it must not be true.” Well that’s the case with TrueCar. What they don’t advertise on TV is the fact that they are charging the dealer $299 to help sell you a vehicle. Who do you think the dealer is going to pass that that cost on to? That’s right, it’s you the public. In the long run you’ll end up paying more. All you’ve done is add a middle man between you and the dealer.
Let’s talk about the hidden hassless of TrueCar. Dealers are pitted against one another to be the low bidder and only the low bidder is going to gain your interest. This is where manipulation is happening to you the consumer. While most dealers run their businesses ethically, there are still few who like to use false advertising to get you in the door. Do you really think a dealer would be willing to sell you a car for under their cost? Instead they’ll play the typical games by not giving you what you deserve for your trade or by charging you an inflated interest rate. If you don’t have a trade and you plan to finance elsewhere, well all of a sudden that car is not in stock anymore. When it’s all said and done you would have gotten a better dealer from the non TrueCar dealer since they don’t have to pay the $299 ransom TrueCar charges dealers. If you see a dealer using TrueCar, don’t just walk, run the other way and save yourself the aggravation of being manipulated, since these are generally the dealers who run their businesses unethically.
If you have a negative TrueCar experience, we would love to hear from you. Please e-mail us at Info@TrueCarSam.com”
Also I have purchased the domain name www.truecarscam.com The video will be front and center and we’ll add negative customer experiences as we get them. We’ll kill their ZMOT! Plus we’ll paint the perception of dealers who use True Car as unethical, so dealers will see value in leaving TrueCar. They’ll hate me at first, much as a crack addict would despise an intervention. In the end they’ll know it was the right choice.
Thoughts?
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Comment by Jim Kristoff on December 3, 2011 at 9:50am
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@Jerry....I would pull the video....AND....make another one that is geared toward the consumer......
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Oh I just realized something. I can switch the video to private and only people I allow to see the video will see the video. The beauty of this, my video is now right under TrueCar page one listing. They see me and my video titled TrueCar Sucks and then this message: "Do you think TrueCar is a good deal? Stop! Watch this video and learn the danger that TrueCar represents ..."
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 3, 2011 at 9:15am
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And so I'd pull this video and make it private.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 3, 2011 at 9:14am
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Jerry, fwiw my opinion is that, if you're going to have a strong SEO effort, that it either be consumer-oriented OR that it be BOTH consumer- and dealer-oriented.
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