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 January 11, 2012 at 1:29pm
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Eric, interesting point, could a dealer retrieve all fees paid since they were extorted illegally?
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Comment by Arnold Tijerina on January 11, 2012 at 1:12pm -
Since all these states are considering TrueCar a broker, doesn't that mean dealers should all send TrueCar 1099's? Just saying.
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Comment by Stan Sher on January 11, 2012 at 1:06pm
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I wish we could make a commercial for tv about TrueCar, the reality of TrueCar that is. The public needs to know that TrueCar has created these sites and domains.
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http://domainnamewire.com/2012/01/11/truecar/
If you have any doubts that TrueCar is the Dealers' enemy, look at this.
What does this have to do with domain names? Well, take a look at these domain names TrueCar just registered:
F*ckedbytheDealer.com
F*ckedbytheDealer.net
F*ckedbytheDealer.org
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Comment by Randy Fry on January 11, 2012 at 12:25pm
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it's already being censored
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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/truecar-changes-billing-model-virgini...
blog on that post!!! see where it goes i got it started
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Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 11, 2012 at 7:03am
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Email blast, I found on http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?5548482-So-True-Car-Zag-p......
ATTENTION!!!! PLEASE READ THE COMMUNICATION BELOW.
Ladies and gentleman: If you have recieved a price quote from our dealership using the "TrueCar / ZAG" auto buying program it would be in your best interest to act immediately to take advantage of their special pricing program. As of 5pm today January 9th 2012 Karen Radley Acura/
Volkswagen will be suspending our relationship with "TrueCar / ZAG" until further notice due to the nature of the current pricing model that TrueCar has in place that violates the VA Code. Karen Radley Acura/Volkswagen appreciates the opportunity to earn your business while providing you a pleasurable purchase experience. I realize that we have customers that travel from over several hundred miles away to purchase their VW's from our facility. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please call these designated numbers listed below to secure the price quote that you have recieved from our internet department.
Sincerely,
Rod Emmons
General Manager
Karen Radley Acura/Volkswagen
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"Brooklyn Ford Dealers Offers TrueCar Style Pricing Online"
http://www.i-newswire.com/brooklyn-ford-dealers-offers-truecar/150574
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I sent the comment below to NADA's FaceBook via message as a photo, by the way, we are free to send info to them via FaceBook.
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