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 James A. Ziegler on January 13, 2012 at 4:18pm
-
Important - Questions Have Been Raised About TrueCar Business Model
January 5, 2012NYSADA has received a number of dealer phone calls in the last couple of weeks questioning the business model used by TrueCar. We have been collecting infor-mation on this issue from other state associations and today participated in an NADA/ATAE phone conference with 58 other associations from across the country. Specific concerns have been shared by a number of states throughout the country including: Colorado, Kansas, Wisconsin and Virginia.
These concerns are broken down into three main categories. The possible viola-tion of federal privacy regulations by giving a third party vendor (in this case TrueCar) access to a dealerships DMS system. Possible violation of state advertis-ing guidelines and the violation of some states brokering laws. New York State laws do not prohibit automotive brokering, as long as proper disclosures are made. Therefore, we will focus on the first two issues.
Dealers should give serious thought as to whether it's a good idea to give any vendor or business partner access to their DMS system. This kind of arrangement raises a whole host of customer privacy concerns and serious questions about how best to protect customer information. Keep in mind that when you allow unfet-tered access to your customer's data you may also find your self drawn into a complaint about potential misuse. NYSADA strongly recommends that all third party vendor contracts should be reviewed by the dealer's attorney.
Dealers should also be concerned about possible advertising violations when us-ing a third party vendor. In New York State the dealer is ultimately liable for an advertising violation even if it is generated by a third party vendor or advertising agency. For instance use of the term invoice by a third party advertiser acting on behalf of a dealer could be considered an advertising violation.
It is important to reiterate a recent warning that NADA sent to all dealers. Under the anti-trust laws, organizing an effort to boycott a company is illegal. Whether to do business with any particular company is an individual dealer decision and should be made by each individual dealer.
-
Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 13, 2012 at 1:02pm -
Apologize for the graphic, but I wrote this blog "Dealer Data Wars" back on Dec 7. Seems a little prescient now.
http://www.dealerelite.net/profiles/blogs/dealer-data-wars-viva-la-...
-
-
Here's another can of worms that occurred to me in an epiphany last evening...
Painter says they get a lot of data from among other sources "Insurance Companies"...
WHOA... Are they getting any pii or even transactional/financial Data from USAA? When government agencies are on the trail, they certainly need to deep audit that relationship. Is USAA providing any identifiable information on Service Personnel? I do not know the answer BUT any investigation needs to include probing USAA's or even AMEX's TrueCar/ZAG relationship? Or at least that's my personal feeling about it.
-
Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 13, 2012 at 12:16pm
-
Gosh. Isn't this guy such a "consumer advocate for his profit" kinda' person that he helped dealers in Louisiana get fined? And then neglected to tell other dealers about that? And so it snowballed to where it is now, having many states come out LEGALLY against their current model (which they got funded $200million to use) . And them and their proxies talking about "fear mongering" and "black helicopters" . . .
I couldn't be more disgusted, but with these guys I've said that before . . .
-
Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 13, 2012 at 11:13am
-
Perfect fit Jim!
-
-
Message to TrueCar and all of the Data Aggregators from us , the dealers and Auto Industry people who care about the car business. The father in the video is Scott Painter. This is the perfect message from the dealers to all of the Data Aggregators, ReSellers and Extractors of our Customer Information. Listen to the lyrics it fits. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xmckWVPRaI
-
-
-
-
Google:
Chrome Systems - Automotive Data and Technology Solutions for ...
www.chrome.com/
Chrome Systems, A Dealer Track Company. Home · Solutions · Vehicle Description · Vehicle Research · Digital Retailing · Professional Services · Products ...
Place page - Write a review
-
-
@Randy The site, carclub.com you show in your post:
The footer: Copyright ©2012 CarClub.com, except vehicle information copyright ©2012 Chrome Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chrome Sysyems, Inc. is a DealerTrack company...and of course we all know how DealerTrack is connected to TrueCar.
-
Comment by Jay Prassel on January 13, 2012 at 9:39am
-
You can build your own Privacy Notices online:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/bankinforeg/privacy_notice_instructio...
I would still have an attorney review it.
© 2024 Created by DealerELITE.
Powered by
You need to be a member of DealerELITE.net to add comments!
Join DealerELITE.net