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 Michael Timmons on February 16, 2012 at 12:40pm
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@ Stick....YES.. and while I appreciate the spirit of why this blog was started (and needed) in that it served as a wake up call for TRUECar in an effort to support the industry. I will be less "warm and fuzzy" if a competitor uses this forum to organize an effort for their personal gain.
"It is one thing for companies to compete for business with one another fairly. But when businesses employ unfair tactics to interfere in another company's business, it becomes something else entirely"
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Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 16, 2012 at 12:20pm
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Near-field communication (NFC).... each time my wife walks in Kroger. They know more about my household than I do. Our Kroger store also uses GPS on her card...they know what isle she is in...in real time.
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Comment by Stick Bogart on February 16, 2012 at 12:18pm -
Michael TimmonsFort Lauderdale, FL
United States
TRUECarI guess you are ..
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Comment by Stick Bogart on February 16, 2012 at 12:16pm
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Michael Timmons are you with Truecar ?
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@Stick...Just so I am clear, as a CEO of a "competing" business, what are you asking the members of Dealer Elite to do?
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Comment by Stick Bogart on February 16, 2012 at 11:41am
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Can everybody that is on this blog send me a bullet list of why truecar is bad for the dealer and the car buyer. Please send them to me I am going to do something BIG that can't be undone at ALL and it will be all over the net... The best part it will cost nothing, not one dime.. My email is stickbogart@gmail.com
After my task is done, I will BLAST it all over the net. Just send me a bullet list of why it's not good for the customer, what bad things car buyers are experiencing, What vital private info of the customer is being passed around, You guys have a goal to KILL THE BEAST... My big gun is ready to load.... So send me a bullet list, Tell all of your automotive dealers and friends to send me a bullet list of what is bad or what is not good for the car buyer. car buyer bad storys.. EVERYTHING... Send it all to Stickbogart@gmail.com
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Comment by David Ruggles on February 16, 2012 at 11:18am
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Comment by Stick Bogart on February 16, 2012 at 10:44am
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I am going to help EXPOSE Truecar very soon and in a BIG WAY, Car buyers that are thinking of using truecar should and well re-think their thinking soon..............
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@Jim. My statement regarding a PR firm was not to insinuate that TC doesn't have a PR firm, but that a PR firm was not the main contributor of the media storm that we are now involved in. With all the publicity, of course we have a PR firm (I believe we have two), but personally I believe they are a waste of money. As long as I am not violating a confidentiality agreement I will answer any question you ask publicly or privately.
@Thomas.. As long as the forum remains professional I will continue to post and answer questions related to our business but it may not be as timely as you would like at times because yes, I do get busy!!
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Comment by Stick Bogart on February 16, 2012 at 10:42am
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In these days your private information like your address, your buying hobbits, your banking info such as your account numbers and your social security number all should be very well protected, There is a company called Truecar that brings or trys to lead car buyers to dealers so this company called Truecar can get a bird dog fee up to $400. They contract with dealers across the country so they have more dealers to lead car buyers to, Not that you can't find a dealer on your own. Now lets chat about Privacy, YOUR PRIVACY.. What happens to your private info if you do business with a dealer and use Truecar. Truecar when they sign a c
Yeah Truecar does not charge you, the car buyer the fee of up to $400, but they charge the dealer that whacked fee. The dealer will then pass that fee on to you the car buyer. Then Truecar now has access to your private info. Now will they SHOW YOU what they do with your info ? I tha not. I am willing to bet that your PRIVATE INFO will be sold TIME and TIME AGAIN.................................. Good Luck using Truecar.
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