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 David T. Gould on February 8, 2012 at 11:57pm
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@Keith - received the email. Thanks. not quite as exciting as I had imagined. Whether he knows it or not, you did him a favor not indexing the childish comments. Note: discussed in the comments was post editing be unethical. I do it constantly. I post on the fly, I don't have the time to set up my comments off line, proof read and transfer here. Many, if not most, of my initial posts have spelling / grammar errors or just don't get my message across as effectively as I would have liked. Upon re-reading I just copy the posted post, hit the delete "X" in the top right corner, paste the original post, edit my concerns and instantly my online IQ jumped up a few extra points. No ill intent. I consider it professional to leave my best effort and not have to look back or apologize weeks or months from now when the post moves up the index.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 8, 2012 at 8:35pm -
Trying to get the blog back to relevancy, reposting some of Jim Z's stuff:
A letter JIM ZIEGLER received from an extremely successful large dealer...
Let’s not forget Ad agencies and direct mail companies that that dealers allow access to owner files to do various campaigns, only to have them reuse and or sell the data to the dealer down the street. Some F&I venders are suspect as well. Written agreements" to not share" data mean nothing. They all will either deny or blame some “low level former employee “after the damage is done. When the last time was a dealer received damage compensation from a vender that shared data? My guess is never . And if you ever did successfully pursue one of these parties,at the end they would be probably be bankrupt anyway.
Thanks for everything you do! (Jim Z)
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 8, 2012 at 8:33pm
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@ David - if you send me your email address, I'll send it to you to look at and explain. Thanks! :)
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@Keith... "BLAH BLAH ROBERT HATES ON JIM ZIEGLER AND DE/ADM MEMBERS HERE <snipped out>" Leaving the rest of us with a cliff hanger. darn. I say post BLAH BLAH ROBERT HATES ON JIM ZIEGLER AND DE/ADM MEMBERS HERE <snipped out>. Should be entertaining.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 8, 2012 at 8:23pm
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Trying to get the blog back to relevancy, reposting some of Jim Z's stuff:
A letter JIM ZIEGLER received from an extremely successful large dealer...
Let’s not forget Ad agencies and direct mail companies that that dealers allow access to owner files to do various campaigns, only to have them reuse and or sell the data to the dealer down the street. Some F&I venders are suspect as well. Written agreements" to not share" data mean nothing. They all will either deny or blame some “low level former employee “after the damage is done. When the last time was a dealer received damage compensation from a vender that shared data? My guess is never . And if you ever did successfully pursue one of these parties,at the end they would be probably be bankrupt anyway.
Thanks for everything you do! (Jim Z)
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 8, 2012 at 8:21pm
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 8, 2012 at 8:11pm
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(PART 2, I hit the text limit, sorry)You know, and we all know it.Get lost and don't email me again.KeithOn Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Robert M a href="mailto:webguy1627@gmail.com" target="_blank">webguy1627@gmail.com> wrote:
BLAH BLAH ROBERT HATES ON JIM ZIEGLER AND DE/ADM MEMBERS HERE <snipped out>
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 8, 2012 at 8:09pm
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Sorry, Jim & Readers. Had to respond since this blog is so viewed Please put your important stuff back after this guy shuts up. I'll try not to respond again.
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Robert, I'm going to put the emails here for folks to see; your "real job" didn't stop you, my, er, "forward" confused you and stopped you. You didn't respect my request. And report away. Nothing will happen because you don't even understand what is SUPPOSED to happen.
Here's the emails, exempting your trash talk about others than me to begin with. I asked you twice. Second time you got the forward. :) Everybody, read from the bottom. You'll see me have to tell him twice, if anybody cares.
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Keith Shetterly <keithshetterly@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 1:11 PM
Subject: Re: The Ziegler Blog
To: Robert M <webguy1627@gmail.com>
I just said the truth, that putting your address up is not smart; berating him would've been to continue to explain why it is stupid. I'll do that for you, instead: If you understood the web, at all, you'd understand why.. I didn't explain it to Michael, but there are some very good reasons not to ADVERTISE your address on a highly-indexed site like DE or ADM. Web Guy == Internet Pet Rock.If you continue to harass me, I will make every effort--and I can make a considerable effort--to smoke you out from your sock puppet email address. And whatever legally can be done against the harassment, will be done.You're kinda' acting dumb like Steven Dietz did. Jeez, I hope you're not him again.DO NOT EMAIL ME AGAIN!KeithOn Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Robert M a href="mailto:webguy1627@gmail.com" target="_blank">webguy1627@gmail.com> wrote:I didn't say YOU were fired, take the time to read it.
I know how to "edit" my posts, I stated that it was strange that after the nasty post last night that it was "cleaned up" this morning.
Me ignorant? You berated Mike Timmons for posting his address.
Try using the Internet to locate folks:
http://www.zabasearch.com/query1_zaba.php?sname=KEITH%20SHETTERLY&a...
Sorry we didn't run into each other.
RobertOn Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Keith Shetterly a href="mailto:keithshetterly@gmail.com" target="_blank">keithshetterly@gmail.com> wrote:I've never been fired from an eCommerce or BDC job, if that's what you meant. Sheesh. Did you confuse me with someone else??Are you really a "web guy"? Kinda ignorant. You can even "edit" your own comments on DE just by using that little "x" on the top right of the comment.I was at NADA, myself; sponsored trip, actually.You got beat, and always will, as long as you hide your real name and dealership. You don't work in this industry on any floor or Internet dept. Yo
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on February 8, 2012 at 7:51pm
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Robert, Robert, Robert.
I didn't want to SPAM you. I told you not to email me any more, but you did. And so I merely was going to automatically route your emails back to you should you accept the forward and continue.
If my intention was to SPAM you, I would not have used my own email to do it with my OWN REAL NAME ON IT. Goodness, how long have you been on the Internet? And when to you plan on being real?
So, you see, you're not that smart. It took you a while to accuse me of such a thing as I did not do. And would not. Even if I were that evil, I would not have done it from my own email address. It is in the accusation of others, without a chance to listen to reason, that exposes the accusation as a mirror of yourself. Look within, Robert.
It won't take a lot of time. Since you're not real, anyway. My move did get you to stop your whiny emails for a day, though. I'll just auto delete them from now on.
Word to the wise, though. You're not the "most" anything, except most creepy.
Thanks,
Keith
P.S. Chris Saraceno: Please consider this a formal complaint--I've got a DE stalker! I'm now being harassed here with accusations that are meant to derail this thread and it's being done by a "member" who is not real. Can you address it, please?
Thank you!
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Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 8, 2012 at 7:33pm
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Nope, I don't think so...saving for another issue. You have to hand it to Painter...he sure knows how to step in it...he could have been our Vice President, from one pile of poop to the next......
"Look, I realize that some people feel, because of my past at Cars-Direct, that this is an anti-dealer play. It’s not....."
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