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 8, 2012 at 9:15am
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If anyone wants a copy of the Data Wars Newsletter to forward on to your email list, please send me a message here with your email address and I'll send it to you...
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Comment by David T. Gould on February 8, 2012 at 8:59am
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Data War is here... Lock'm Down. Individual parts of dealership / consumer data (fields) can be restricted (removed) from dms polling / outside access. Lock those fields down to put an end to your exposure in the Data War.
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I just sent out 135,000 emails this morning referencing the blogs and announcing the Data Wars... "GAME ON"
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Painter still doesn't Get It, does he? The tone of his latest interview, still talking down too us, lecturing about what the consumer wants and he is the salvation and the answer because we're stupid. Admitting he was a bad guy in the past but he's come to repent and be baptized in the love of car people. Do we have a "Trust" issue with him?
"Look, I realize that some people feel, because of my past at Cars-Direct, that this is an anti-dealer play. It’s not. This is about fundamentally recognizing that the consumer has changed how they shop, and we believe that this is one of the most important tools for dealership profitability and growth in the future."
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Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on February 8, 2012 at 5:34am
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Flat fees require no DMS access!
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Scott Painter, F&I Mag, Today's issue:
"Look, I realize that some people feel, because of my past at Cars-Direct, that this is an anti-dealer play. It’s not. This is about fundamentally recognizing that the consumer has changed how they shop, and we believe that this is one of the most important tools for dealership profitability and growth in the future."
My parody translation: "Look, I may have attempted to do some pretty crappy things to dealer's in the past with CarsDirect, and yes I was forced by the board to step down....that aside, trust me, this is different."
http://www.fi-magazine.com/Article/Story/2012/02/Under-Fire/Page/2....
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@Larry I am not a proponent of DMS providers getting a monopoly over data control. My technically feasible suggestion is for specific fields to be non retrievable with any outside vendor polling. My opinion is that vendors have no need for dealer costs, vehicle / products ID's and consumer personal information. Dealers would not have to be as concerned with data sharing agreement loop holes if the data shared was harmless to them and their customers.
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Comment by Larry Bruce on February 7, 2012 at 10:42pm -
@David TrueCar has given ReyRey and ADP the ammo they need to lock down the data for good. DMI and RCI will control the data coming out of those systems. Dealers will need to make sure their data sharing agreement with these certified vendors extend to the company doing the polling of the DMS data.
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Keep in mind gentlemen. It is the cooperation of multiple vendors combining data that makes the data problem here. It is not whether Vendor #1 stops taking this, Vendor #2 stops taking that and Vendor #3 says they are no longer are taking another. It is what Vendor #1, #2, and #3 have combined that makes the lethal cocktail we all saw, and paid a huge price for, in the TrueCar Bell Curve. They have the software already to accumulate and coordinate customer data. They have the affiliation and partnerships to put the pieces together as soon as dealers drop their guard. As profitable as "Clearing Houses" would be for others, (another expense for dealers) I suggest dealers with the cooperation of their DMS providers "lock down" a couple of fields to make the completion of the BellCurve formula impossible. I will suggest a couple to start here: customer security information including drivers license, social security number, birthday, state registration data, insurance data, deal information; sale profit, vehicle invoice amount, vehicle ID #, trade ID #, trade value, finance and insurance; profit, products sold, amount of products, service and parts; profit, products cost, ect... Other DE members input here...
Time to LOCK'EM DOWN gentlemen. Technically this can be done. DTG DATA LEAKAGE SMACKDOWN TIME! Lock these fields down.
(I can anticipate the push back about to come about how vendors "need" these fields... I'm ready, fire away)
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Comment by Larry Bruce on February 7, 2012 at 10:23pm
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Jim I am sure there are some who think they can build that app. Actually the app is the easiest part. Getting access to the system will be the problem. There are few if any that will be able to do that.
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