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 Michael Timmons on February 16, 2012 at 5:41pm

@ Larry. If I were looking to win friends there are certainly better social media sites to visit (Facebook,Twitter). I do hope to establish some long lasting professional relationships and at some juncture be able to discuss topics other than TRUECar. I am here to answer questions so;

1. If a dealer wants to be on TrueCar and not have TrueCar in its DMS is that ok? 

In certain cases, dealer groups have the opportunity to "push" the customer data. In most cases it is requirement of the program to enable DMS access for sales matching.

2. If you do need data from the dealerships DMS what is it for? 

TrueCar's third-party service providers extract DMS sales data to accurately match sales to the customers that originally submitted their information by using our service. We also analyze anonymous sales data (stripped of personal and confidential information) to determine which market areas (by zip code) our dealers are most effective at selling to, thereby distributing higher quality leads.

If for matching are you ok taking just the PII data (Name, Address, City, State, Zip, Phone, Email) that is the only data necessary for matching.

Yes, we have asked our providers to only submit the fields above that you mentioned (plus co-buyer).

4. Is TrueCar willing to sign a data sharing agreement that states you cannot use the dealers data for any other purpose other than to match sales records? 

We are reviewing and will be changing our dealer agreements. If you have specific language that you would like me to review please send it to me.

 

5. In that same vain are you willing to have you data polling company sign the same agreement or change if they won't? 

Again, I would want to review the language and make sure it is enforced across the industry and not just for TRUECar. I believe as a former executive of Reynolds you are much more informed than me about who is aggregating and repurposing data. It would be unfair to set any company up to be at a competitive disadvantage to others in the space (Edmunds, Auto Trader, KBB etc.) 

I seriously doubt that you expected me to answer #3
Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 16, 2012 at 4:30pm

@ Larry:  Amen!  "Bad Cop/Good Cop" and $3 will get you some Starbucks (or maybe $6, if you're an addict :).

It's time for positive action.  By TrueCar.  PERIOD.

Comment by Mike Warwick on February 16, 2012 at 2:08pm

Well said Larry.  If TrueCar wanted to win dealers back, they would stay out of the media and establish a dealer advisory board. They would then LISTEN to dealer's concerns and retool the product to address those concerns, not ignore dealers until they get called out by the state regulators. If TrueCar wants to remain a customer centric product that sets up dealers and customers as adversaries, then don't expect the dealers to play nice, pay $299 and allow you into our data. 

Comment by Larry Bruce on February 16, 2012 at 1:45pm

Michael you're not going to win any friends in this thread so stop trying. I think you would be doing the industry and TrueCar a service if you just answer directly and honestly the following questions. 

 

1. If a dealer wants to be on TrueCar and not have TureCare in its DMS is that ok? 

 

2. If you do need data from the dealerships DMS what is it for? If for matching are you ok taking just the PII data (Name, Address, City, State, Zip, Phone, Email) that is the only data necessary for matching.

 

3. Why should the dealer body trust a person & a company that started a former company to circumvent the dealer, got run out of the business and out of that company only to start a new one to do the same thing, say the same things and then only "Change" when you got caught? 

 

4. Is TureCar willing to sign a data sharing agreement that states you cannot use the dealers data for any other purpose other than to match sales records? 

 

5. In that same vain are you willing to have you data polling company sign the same agreement or change if they won't? 

 

Michael most of this could have been avoided if TrueCar would have just been up front with its dealers on what it was doing with data and answered questions straight forward. Also if your CEO who I have met and spent time with and seems like a nice enough guy, would just understand who his customer is (who is paying the bills). 

 

So don't be suprised now when dealers don't trust TrueCar, when they don't like TureCar when they go out of their way to make TureCar's life hard. TrueCar and its management brought it on themselves.

 

The only way back is to show us with action...and its going to take a lot of action...a whole lot. 

Comment by Michael Timmons on February 16, 2012 at 1:22pm

Why do you keep asking if I work at TRUECar when I have told you yes and you already know the answer? 

Comment by Stick Bogart 53 minutes ago

Michael TimmonsFort Lauderdale, FL
United States
TRUECar

I guess you are ..

Comment by Stick Bogart on February 16, 2012 at 1:11pm

why does truecar need to DIG into the dealers data base, and what do they really do with it once they get it. Maybe sell it to others, I bet so.

Comment by Stick Bogart on February 16, 2012 at 1:01pm

I am not here for my gain.  Michael you work at truecar  right ? 

Comment by Stick Bogart on February 16, 2012 at 12:59pm

Michael are you apart of truecar ?

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 16, 2012 at 12:41pm

She has the privilege of not paying over retail which you will do if you do not enroll. She gets no added value. 

Comment by David Ruggles on February 16, 2012 at 12:41pm

@ David - I didn't post the link because I thought it would make everyone feel "comfortable."

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