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 James A. Ziegler on February 15, 2012 at 10:48pm
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David...name address and what they bought and more is personally identifiable information - private data. Michael can't deny this.
"TrueCar does not need to poll "private data and information about our customers" directly if they can get it from another source."
That statement is such crap because ...if they got it from another source then the other source stole it from the dealers' data DMS.
We have to stop TrueCar and other vendors from stealing customer information and endangering their identities.
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David, I sort of like Michael, but he does work for TrueCar ... and I have strong reason to distrust TrueCar in that everything they say changes every five minutes. Let's get this straight... IF TRUECAR IS A SUBSCRIPTION MODEL NOW...THEY DO NOT NEED TO ACCESS THE DEALERSHIP'S CUSTOMER DATA FOR ANY REASON.
but, since they still do require access to customer data, what could the reason possibly be?
These people cannot be trusted.
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The fact remains... TrueCar is on the offensive... numerous Scott Painter interviews portraying dealers as the bad guys. Well Scott, you're trying to sink a Battle Ship with a BB Gun.
The more you attack, the more the industry won't do business with you.
Your company could become a citizen of the community BUT you are doggedly trying to steal it.
We have issues with you trying to acquire personally identifiable customer information in violation of our customer's privacy and legal identity protection. No matter what TrueCar says, we won't give up our consumer data to you and your pirates. Dealers have a responsibility to our customers NOT to allow companies like TrueCar to pilfer their data for unknown purposes.
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Comment by David T. Gould on February 15, 2012 at 10:19pm
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@ Jim. I believe Michael did say on the previous page that TrueCar was not going to require "private data and information about our customers, in violation of their privacy".
At the risk of sounding patronizing... does everyone here understand that TrueCar does not need to poll "private data and information about our customers" directly if they can get it from another source?
Has George O'Sullivan found the Holy Grail of automotive dealer data security? PLEASE ALL... SLOW DOWN AND INVESTIGATE THIS!
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Great analogy Keith...
@George O'Sullivan please re-post your original post about second party vendors extracting subcontracted info... Appreciated. JIM
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 15, 2012 at 10:05pm -
When you want to turn the herd, grab the bulls. When you want to overcome stubborn bulls, scare the herd. When you want to kill and eat the herd, treat them calmly, attract them with some food, and close the fence gate behind them.
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Why does TrueCar still doggedly require that dealers allow identifiable customer data... information about our customers personal information... to be taken by TrueCar if their model is strictly a subscription?
This is NOT about price, if Truecar would back off asking for private data and information about our customers, in violation of their privacy, we would back off too wouldn't we?
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Comment by Michael Timmons on February 15, 2012 at 9:56pm
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@Thomas. TC received a letter from Virginia and subsequently changed from a pay for performance to a subscription based model that, at the time, was blessed by the state regulators. The new issue in Virginia was that in the subscription model if a dealer didn't sell enough cars TC wanted to be able to credit the dealer back for the shortfall. Unfortunately, Virginia stated in the meeting that TC couldn't credit or give the dealer back any money as this would constitute a transaction based model. TRUECar did react to Virginia legislators but didn't realize they couldn't give money back to the dealer. Personally, I don't get it but that's the law.
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@ George... so the Standard Reports can be customized?
@ Jim... RubyOnRails is a programming language.
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Comment by George O'Sullivan on February 15, 2012 at 9:42pm
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@ David the "Standard Reports" were anything that had to do with pricing and any and ALL fields that had to do with a sale. Including A&H, Warranties and taxes.
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