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 5, 2012 at 12:55pm
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Wait a minute, you can't be doing and saying these things. You're just a bunch of insignificant people in the presence of Gods.
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Comment by David T. Gould on January 5, 2012 at 12:45pm
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http://santamonica.patch.com/articles/amid-truecars-battles-a-quiet... even their name TRUECAR is questionable. How the heck was Painter able to get this far on the backs of others?
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Yes, you know what bothers me a lot? TrueCar people have been saying, even in writing on these blogs that the people complaining are people they've never heard of...excuse me, isn't that like saying that unless you're famous , you're just some kind of insignificant piss ant?
The arrogance doesn't stop with with Painter, I'm thinking, these people are too full of themselves with a "Superiority Complex" like they're smart and entitled...and we're a bunch of 'stoopid' Forrest Gumps ...talking down to us because we're not buying the bullcrap. I might be wrong but that's how it appears to me.
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The arrogance doesn't stop with with Painter, I'm thinking, these people are too full of themselves with a "Superiority Complex" like they're smart and entitled...and we're a bunch of 'stoopid' Forrest Gumps ...talking down to us because we're not buying the bullcrap. I might be wrong but that's how it appears to me.
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Didn't Arnold Schwarzenegger make a movie titled "TRUE LIES" ...maybe he could help with being a spokesperson for them...at least writing their press releases.
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I just had another dealer email me- big volume player in Tennessee - copied me on an email he sent to the GM-Partners of his five dealerships telling them that if they were enrolled to cancel TrueCar.
That book TrueCar emailed to dealers reeks of desperation, I especially like the part where they say it is only a handful of dissenters... Damn, can't these people count?
And as far as the dealer associations working with them... is somebody smoking dope somewhere? I have spoken with more than a dozen Dealer Association executives, and with the possible exception of California, I assure you nobody is looking at them in a favorable way that I have spoken to or corresponded with.
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Jim, Your post of the DMS provider data clause makes me nauseous. I am reposting to emphasize the importance of controlling customer private information. You and this thread are doing the automotive industry a huge favor. NOTE: (v) prohibits sharing of customer personal information. if they are forwarding same, they are in breach of contract and may share liability with any dealer found culpable.
@ Heather, I am pleased that you did your research, found this thread and cancelled TrueCar. Knowledge is power.
REPORTING;DATA SHARING. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in this Agreement, Client hereby grants (DMS Provider name) the non-exclusive, royalty free right and license to (i) repurpose and/or aggregate the Extracted Data, (ii) track, analyze and/or create reports related to aggregate activity and/or results obtained in connection with Client's use of any (DMS Provider name ) Offerings (including use by Client's customer of any Software, Services, or any other (DMS Provider name) Proprietary Materials) and share such information with its affiliated companies, (iii) share Extracted Data with such third parties as (DMS Provider name) deems necessary in connection with providing (DMS Provider name) Offerings hereunder (iv) utilize such information to, among other things, create, market, and sell products and services, and (v) use, store, modify, redistribute, sublicense, transfer and sell to third parties, in aggregated form, the Extracted data or any other information tracked, analyzed, reported or otherwise received by (DMS Provider name) in connection with providing (DMS Provider name)Offerings. For the avoidance of doubt, "aggregated" data shall not include any Customer Information or information that in and of itself may be used by a third party to (x) identify a Client's customer, or (y) determine the number of sales and/or the financial terms of any sale made by the Client. Client further agrees that (DMS Provider name) may, and Client expressly grants (DMS Provider name) the right to, disclose and provide to its affiliates and representatives, and its OEM partners, consumer lead information and disposition status thereof with respect to consumer leads that are provided or sold to Client by any OEM or any of (DMS Provider name) affiliates or representatives.
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Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 5, 2012 at 9:34am
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As Keith noted in his reference to the Virginia letter...I read their mid 2010 warning to Zag that the dealer bears all responsibility...Maybe that is why they were slow to respond (over a year and a name change latter, no action taken on TCs part)...Live meeting on Jan. 9th??
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Comment by Heather Graham on January 5, 2012 at 8:48am
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I was just going to post that mass email. Kind of amazing. While we have enjoyed the Zag services in the past, over the last several month it was pretty clear that they were making internal changes. Upon researching and finding all these wonderful posts on this (and a few others) site, we have terminated our contract with Zag. In speaking with our IT person we learned that they were pulling dozens of reports. This hardly goes along with explanation that they are only looking to match up data. Now that the new year has started it will be very interesting to see how the States and various Auto Assns handle the Truecar problems.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 5, 2012 at 8:38am -
Well, it's clear from the Virginia letter that they did NOT work with Virginia from as far back as mid-year 2010. So that part is not true.
As to DMS, what does your TrueCar agreement SAY they CAN do with your DMS data? And do they take more data than required to validate the sale? Why?
At the bottom of it all, the dealers sold the vehicles, and that sales data ends up repurposed against the participating dealers. The "indirect" route of buying the data from DMS *providers* (yes, that is possible!) and other sources does not exempt their business model from being described that way.
It's kind of like the RICO laws (which I'm NOT suggesting apply here), in that inserting middlemen into the system doesn't exempt the head and tail of the snake from responsibility.
Regardless, the whole "we're not a broker" public argument seems to have been broadly ignored until the "vocal minority" of "entrenched" people such as here asked about it. I mean, who knew that folks that try to educate and lead dealers to the best parts of Internet, Internet 2.0, and Internet "Next" were so backward??
I don't personally have a dime invested in this, either way. I just don't react too well to people telling me dealers and salespeople aren't needed, then whining about "entrenched" thinking when they're called out about it by some of the more progressive thinkers and leaders in the industry!
Some of us are "enTRENCHed"??? How about TrueCar is "enDITCHed" with regulators?
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