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 Arnold Tijerina on November 30, 2011 at 2:44pm

Just putting in my $.02 cents, Keith. Dealers are constantly trying to change the negative stereotypes that exist with consumers and this certainly won't help that effort, whether it's meant for consumers or not.

This thread is a nuclear bomb waiting to happen. As you know, DE and ADM both SEO very well.

I'm not trying to invalidate the thread. I've stopped pointing this out. Just answering people who address me personally.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 30, 2011 at 2:38pm

This thread has accomplished much, Arnold.  That might be to your liking, but this isn't a consumer site.  If they get here, what's been said in seriousness can be defended.  It is just silly to keep bringing up that point.  If we worried about consumers here, I guess we'd turn off the access to non-member lurkers and police better who joined.  There's a lot of transparency in these pages.  And little participation by TrueCar, which is what you should be paying attention to. 

Comment by Arnold Tijerina on November 30, 2011 at 2:34pm

@David I understand but that doesn't mean an uneducated consumer will that doesn't know you. I believe they'd take your comment quite literally. As for just about everything else you said, I agree. Dealers are Dr. Frankenstein. Not the victims of the monster. The fact remains that the only reason consumers don't have cost information for Apple products, or whatever is that they never gave it out, unlike dealers. Kind of hard to close Pandora's box now. 

This thread has some good points but I doubt it will accomplish anything other than feeding into the public's negative perception of deals and reinforcing TrueCars to consumers.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 30, 2011 at 2:27pm

I will say that that was kind of dumb for TC to ditch the video.  Right there it says they are responsible for removing it due to copyright claim . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL4ChT8pPes&feature=player_embedded I wonder what kind of impression would be made to just pass around the dead link now?  I guess it's kind of doing that itself, but why not help it along?  I wonder what kind of reputation TC wants with dealers...well, they're going to get a different one now with more than a few, I think. $200million has a lot of inertia.

Comment by Michael Deville on November 30, 2011 at 2:23pm

Where is it written that the consumer needs to know invoice, our cost on used cars and how much we pay people? interesting business.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on November 30, 2011 at 2:18pm

RIP Jerry's video . . . FOR NOW.  TrueCar is evidently now a $200million bully . . . and it's loose in YOUR dealership's data for IT'S profit!

Comment by David Ruggles on November 30, 2011 at 2:13pm

Man!  Tried to access the video sent by Larry anbd TrueCar had already had it taken down.

Comment by Brad Alexander on November 30, 2011 at 2:12pm

True Car didn't remove this:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4lunW0At0

Comment by David Ruggles on November 30, 2011 at 2:11pm

@ Arnold - I'm sure you understand there is a certain "tongue in cheek" element to what I said.  But you tell me - What is more important?  Transparency?  Or Profit? 

 

Is there anyone out there who thinks consumers give a rat's ass what our costs are?  The fact is there can never be transparency in our business because the consumer will NEVER believe it.  I wonder why we have to have this discussion over and over again.  I've been hearing it in one form or another for over 40 years.  The system we have is as good as it gets.  It ain't perfect.  Perfect doesn't exist. 

Comment by Jim Kristoff on November 30, 2011 at 2:06pm
Comment by Larry Muirhead 9 minutes ago

THE MONSTER HAS SPOKEN!  TAKE HEED!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL4ChT8pPes&feature=player_embedded

IT's BEEN REMOVED BY TRUECAR!

 

All I can say is WOW.........they have no problem trying to put Dealers out of business....but give them a little bad press??....................................KILL THE BEAST!!!!!!!!

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