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 Jason Grace on January 6, 2012 at 10:34am -
Way to stand up for your clients best interest JIM! I love reading all the great information you've compiled.
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 6, 2012 at 10:02am
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LOOK... Even in Great Britain now they are publishing stories about TrueCar's epic problems...
From the Economist, click here. http://www.economist.com/node/21542456
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This was my response on another blog to Steven Dietz, managing partner of GRP Partners, www.GRPPartners.com one of the major players that helped TrueCar raise $200million when he was baiting me to dialogue with him this morning...
Steven, you're right, I do not like what you're posting because, you are here for one reason, and that is to push the issues down to the second page because you are a representative of TrueCar, and, in my opinion, as big a liar as I perceive them to be. You're here because Truecar is in a crisis , not because you're some benevolent guy trying to hold a civil debate. I think you are here doing damage control because this project, TrueCar, is in severe trouble and we all know it. I will not respond to you beyond this and, believe me, you are in unfriendly territory.
Yes, I brought the real issue back to the top of the page after you pushed them back with calculated precision. AND I will continue to work behind the scenes to educate dealers, the public, and government agencies about Truecar activities, concerns and what we perceive to be malicious intentions. There are privacy and data issues yet to be resolved with customer information Truecar is extracting from dealers' computers, buying and selling.
I strongly advise everyone on this blog not to engage you or debate with you issues we know to be untrue and have proven it over hundreds of pages. You are the proverbial smoke screen and, personally, I am not going for it.
To me, you are just another example of smug arrogance, thinking you a re playing with inferior people. Watch what happens next...and what happens after that...and then what happens next. Nobody in their right mind would invest another nickle in this disaster, and your financial advice might be a little suspect as this continues to go south, at least that's how I see it from my point of view, I could be wrong But I doubt it. JIM :)
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Thanks Ron...
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The Virginia Automobile Dealers Association is one of the most high-integrity, strongest and most educational in the country. It is headed by my good friend of many years, Don Hall. I was their keynote speaker last year for the combined Virginia- Maryland annual dealers Convention at The Greenbrier Resort. They will be present at the Virginia Truecar discussions.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 5, 2012 at 6:04pm
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@ David/Eric/All: THIS is why they want all that extra info from the DMS.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 5, 2012 at 6:02pm
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@ Jim: Thank you!
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 5, 2012 at 6:01pm
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YES David Gould, exactly! The point here is that you do NOT own your own customers any longer--if you sell them, Zag/TrueCar can now market to them on their own behalf or in partnership with ANYone else. They know what your customer paid, what they financed for, what aftermarkets they bought--and they can come after all that post-sale, if they want. And, if they do it with the right partnership, you'll not even know it was THEM. OR if you leave TrueCar/Zag, well, then they can come after your customers. This is HUGE HUGE HUGE.
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Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 5, 2012 at 5:58pm
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Great news Jim...and great job!
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Just received this on Facebook....
All American Ford, N.J.'s largest Ford volume dealer is ending their relationship with Zag / True Car. All American Ford does not want to participate in a relationship that creates a destruction of services, quality, reputation and our profits. True Car's message to the public is that our products....our brands are not worth market value, we strongly disagree!!
All American Ford wants to thank Jim Ziegler for leading the charge in providing such compelling information and shedding light on the darkness know as TRUECAR!!
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