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...

  1. 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".
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. AMEX, USAA and all of their affiliates do not want the bad consumer relations this push back is creating with their members and customers.
  6. 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.
  7. 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"
  8. Keep calling your National and State Dealer Associations demanding they get involved and stay involved... No excuses.
  9. 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.
  10. 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

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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 12, 2012 at 12:58pm

@ Jay:  Did you realize that the ZAG/TrueCar agreement ALLOWS TrueCar/Zag to market to a dealer's customers? So the "NO" on the "For our affiliates to market to you" is incorrect on the form?

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 12, 2012 at 12:43pm

@ Randy...There does seems to be a pattern with him....He always leaves out that the board of directors ask him to leave as in cardirect.com

Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 12, 2012 at 12:40pm

Hmmm.... Space travel with Scott Painter? Will have to be a big bird!...It would have to be the size of a C-5 Galaxy just to get his ego on board.....

Comment by Randy Fry on January 12, 2012 at 12:33pm

looks like to me  by his track record that Truecars is a 2 year gig and then he is going to move on to the next sliced bread

Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 12, 2012 at 12:29pm

@ Eric:  Maybe his part of the ship can just keep going . . .

Comment by David T. Gould on January 12, 2012 at 12:28pm

@ Jay, that form may be a step in a direction for dealers wanting TrueCar (and others) to benefit from their customer's data... but I don't think you have to be a lawyer to see that the form, as written, does not reflect TrueCar's current use of customer data OR protect a dealership by having it signed by an unwary customer. I think dealers should have their attorneys review their state laws and federal laws before placing any documents in front of customers that waive that customer's privacy rights on behalf of a vendor and / or their affiliates.

This data privacy issue is EXPLOSIVE... treat it that way to not get burned.

Comment by DealerELITE on January 12, 2012 at 11:54am

29,250 views and 145 pages of comments! Jim look what you started Nation Wide.

All because of 1 question posted on www.dealerelite.net several weeks ago.

The power of social media continues to amaze me.  

Comment by Jay Prassel on January 12, 2012 at 11:40am

I've worked as an expert witness with several dealers over the years on Compliance issues. The new Privacy Act Forms (Jan 2011) have two options, Non-Affiliates & Affiliates. It is my non-legal opinion that if you're using TrueCar, you should be using the Affiliates Form.

For our affiliates’ everyday business purposes–Information about your transactions and experiences - YES.

I've uploaded the two samples for download ( with highlights ): http://premierleadsolutions.com/privacy/

Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 12, 2012 at 11:20am

BTW... nobody is taking their eyes off of TrueCar, still in the crosshairs

Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 12, 2012 at 10:43am

The new fight is going to be The Data Wars... I have a list and I'm checking it twice. There are some vendors that have gone way far out to the Dark Side and we're going to start the dealer revolution. No vendor is too big or too important to fire.

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