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 Troy Spring on January 3, 2012 at 10:25pm
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Jim, I think that is great news.... You are right they are huge and influential.
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on January 3, 2012 at 9:47pm
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Atlantic Automotive Group Announces All Locations Not Participating in TrueCar.com
http://www.prlog.org/11762574-atlantic-automotive-group-announces-a...
These guys are one of the largest, most influential dealer groups in New York..
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 3, 2012 at 8:54pm -
@ Chad: Yes, it is not the DMS. The term "DMS" is used 26 times in the patent, however.
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Comment by Jerry Thibeau on January 3, 2012 at 8:45pm
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In stead of using the company name (TC), I would suggest simply referring to them as the "beast."
The beast is going to dominate SEO as they grow. Dealers are inadvertently helping build their largest competitor. It saddens me that some dealers are taking a wait and see approach before canceling. Others will end up jumping on the Beast since the competition is there. Once that happens it gets even uglier for dealers.
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 3, 2012 at 7:16pm
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Maybe the difference for all of this data is in those TrueCar patent applications? The one filed from 2008 and granted this past May 2011, #7,945,483, "System and method for sales generation in conjunction with a vehicle data system" talking about that up-front price and all. Painter's on that one, assignee TrueCar, and it's an interesting read (though long as patents tend to be). The graphics were interesting. That first patent . . . the "quality score" for a dealer . . . well, that wouldn't be one of the reasons to look at the dealer's DMS information, would it? Is that the "Vehicle Data System" from the title? I asked for some clarification; we'll see if I get it.
Then there's #7,945,500 and #8,065,218 having to do with "System and method for providing an insurance premium for price protection", assignee PriceLock (from Painter), which talks about insurance as a commodity . . . there's that pesky word again. Next stop on the Painter Commodity Train, insurance!Here's that "Vehicle Data System" patent, for those who want a read: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITO...
For all here: You can search the insurance items if you want from the search screens of the US Patent and Trademark office: http://patft.uspto.gov/
Thanks!
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 3, 2012 at 7:13pm
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@ Eric, please put the screen snaps into the posts here for all to see. And also email them to me as before, if you can. I won't get the same search results from here as you do, especially for PPC. Thanks!
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 3, 2012 at 6:23pm
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@ Eric, please screen snap that ad. Can you email it to me if you do? keithshetterly@gmail.com. Thanks!
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 3, 2012 at 6:15pm
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.... @ Jim: So, is it inadvertent if a lead provider sells a TrueCar lead to an OEM because there are no TrueCar dealers in that shopper's market within a realistic TrueCar dealer's "striking distance"? The OEM may not know the source is TC, yes, but the lead provider would basically be an "overflow marketplace" for TC. Which would make sense, considering that TC can't be everywhere . . . at least not yet.
Hmmmm. We wouldn't have to speculate if the TrueCar Lead Squad had ever come back--as promised--and explained the issues that Jerry himself had with this very thing. I wonder what happened to that?
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I was just called and informed by an insider that some "Lead Providers" are buying leads from TrueCar that are inadvertently being sold to GM and given to GM dealers. OKAY, that is exactly my point, customer information being passed around from vendor to vendor and now back to the manufacturer....it's out of control.
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WHOA...I am receiving dozens of emails already about this... My latest article in Wards Dealer Business, read it here... http://wardsdealer.com/latest/1230jz_Ziegler_column/
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