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
-
Comment by David T. Gould on February 12, 2012 at 7:08pm
-
@Thomas. Ok insurers could have some of the information... In some states. Is that consistent enough to drive the bell curve that was accurate in my area to within $50? Don't think so. And again not seeing the practicality of each insurance turning over the data. Let's switch the insurers to possibly to recognize your thought. Where else could the exact price of an exact deal be coming from on a consistent and reliable basis? Updated Data War Data Culprit List below:
Lender? Yes. They have the purchase amount... But it would be a big chore to get the lenders (real time) to turn over the data. What would be in it for them?
Insurers? Possibly. Most do not require the purchase price. Getting data from each? Improbable.
State Registration Office? Nope. No purchase price there either. Not "real time" enough.
Tax Records? No. See State Registration Office response above.
Other sources? Definitely.
(Add to other sources list here)
-
Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 12, 2012 at 7:02pm
-
This is BS, it is not a natural tendency that put us in a race to the bottom...it has been orchestrated!
-
-
From the article James has referred us to, Painter is QUOTED:
"But there is no question that dealers' natural tendency to compete with one another has resulted in extremely low prices."
I would ask.....Is it a natural tendency when Painter's reps call dealers and tell them they need to adjust their price because they are not competitive?...Is it a natural tendency when Painter's reps send emails to dealers and tells them they need to adjust their price because others in the group are lower?
Painter needs to be called out line by line when he lies!...There are laws against this behavior, the FTC will have something to say about this before it ends.
-
-
@David, many insurers in Michigan require a copy of the RD108 (copy of the transaction registered with the state that shows price, trade, rebate, etc.)
-
Comment by James A. Ziegler on February 12, 2012 at 6:54pm
-
I promise you Scott Painter has started another war he will regret... again. This guy just needs to learn when to shut up... He is another Steven Dietz.
-
-
I promise you Scott Painter has started another war he will regret... again.
-
-
I am writing another mass email to 135,000 dealers and industry execs right now to hit Monday morning... Scott Painter doesn't get it. There is no TrueCar if nobody participates. AND no dealerships (relatively) are going to participate with them as long as they take Customers identifiable Information out of dealers computers... If they really were planning a subscription model, there would be no reason to take customer data. Truecar is lying-again- to us and to the consumers.
Customers have a right to privacy without these people accumulating their data, endangering their identity and invading their privacy. Consumers do not realize their is a network of people stealing their identifiable information when they do business with some of these vendors.
-
-
Am I looking at the same at the same link? THE NEW YORK TIMES I read it twice. Thomas' F&I Magazine was much, much worse. I think the THE NEW YORK TIMES reporter did a pretty good job of describing the current environment surrounding TrueCar and online pricing sites... including a comparison at the end that showed TrueCar's higher price due to their excessive dealership fee.
Noted: "It claims that its data is even more granular and accurate than many of its competitors' because it is pulled from 30 different sources; the site collects its pricing information from lenders, insurers, the state registration office and tax records, among other sources." reprinted from: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/your-money/car-dealers-wince-a...
-
Comment by Christopher Charles on February 12, 2012 at 3:27pm
-
"worked to good", robbing a bank is illegal because it also worked too good.
-
-
SCOTT PAINTER SAYS DEALERS ARE STUPID IDIOTS IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. READ IT HERE
© 2024 Created by DealerELITE.
Powered by
You need to be a member of DealerELITE.net to add comments!
Join DealerELITE.net