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 James A. Ziegler on January 3, 2012 at 4:58pm

I predict 2012 will be the year dealers throw every intruder who is extracting unnecessary information out of the databases.  There is going to be a huge revolution upheaval as dealers and attorneys rewrite agreements throwing out vendors, data aggregators and re sellers, CRMs, and all others extracting unnecessary information...especially those re selling data or passing it to affiliate vendors. 

Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 3, 2012 at 4:55pm
@ David Gould: That is the link you click on right before you submit your PII information. You can see it yourself if you just use TrueCar.com and click on it--at that point, you've not submitted your PII, and you can see for yourself.
Comment by Thomas A. Kelly on January 3, 2012 at 4:54pm

@David B.,That is correct.

Comment by David T. Gould on January 3, 2012 at 4:53pm

Wow Keith. Remarkable. Are customers electronically signing off on this or is this a page (among thousands) on their website. That is an amazing disclosure. I was half joking below but " “Web beacons” are invisible electronic images, called a single-pixel (1x1) or clear GIF, which can recognize certain types of information on your computer, such as a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page where the web beacon is placed." is not that funny. 

That disclosure allows them to give TrueCar user's information to the world! There is no amount of savings on a car or anything else that could convince me to do the same. What vendor or associate or whatever are they sending your contact information to? What are their "web beacons" going to find and distribute? 

This is deep... Going to have to do some Googling. VERY UNSETTLING FOR A CONSUMER... There is no way that people understand this. (sound familiar dealers?)

Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 3, 2012 at 4:53pm
@ David: That has been brought up as a strong concern; the more folks who get the risk and ask, the more the question might be answered.
Comment by David Blassingame on January 3, 2012 at 4:50pm

I think I understand the Dealer Track connection, now.  When Dealer Track sold ALG to TrueCar, Dealer Track gained some ownership in True Car and vice versa.  That would give TrueCar access to client information from the 17,000 Dealer's that submit deals through Dealer Track dealers.  Does that sound right?

Comment by Keith Shetterly on January 3, 2012 at 4:39pm
Hmmm. Something to consider: I think this TrueCar privacy policy allows this type of lead sharing/selling/barter/whatever - do you agree? From https://www.truecar.com/popups/privacy.html
"The information we receive about you or from you may be used or shared by us with our corporate affiliates, dealers, agents, vendors, and other third parties including in connection with your use of the Service. In addition, there may be instances when TrueCar may access or disclose PII or Non-PII, including under the following circumstances: (i) to protect or defend the legal rights or property of TrueCar; (ii) to protect the safety and security of users of the Services or members of the public including acting in urgent circumstances; (iii) to protect against fraud or for risk management purposes; or (iv) to comply with applicable law or legal process. In addition, if TrueCar sells all or part of its business or sells or transfers all or a material part of its assets, or is otherwise involved in a merger or transfer of all or a material part of its business, we may transfer your PII or Non-PII to the party or parties involved in the transaction as part of that transaction."
Comment by David T. Gould on January 3, 2012 at 4:36pm

Keep Intruders Out Of Your DMS... 

Comment by David T. Gould on January 3, 2012 at 4:28pm

@ Eric, thank you for that data update. Keeping the data intrusion / misuse issue in the spotlight is important.

@ Jim, wondering how many dealers are paying multiple times for the same leads as TrueCar spreads their information to other vendors (including manufacturer(s) if they are charging dealers per lead). Auditing 3rd party billings for leads has a built in dealer failure factor. Not a question in my mind that duplicate leads will not be caught or charged back. Manufacturer / Franchise distribution of data is evident below and a VERY CONCERNING ISSUE. In my opinion, TrueCar is a spy lurking in every participating dealer's DMS. Stop the madness. 

Comment by Randy Fry on January 3, 2012 at 4:26pm

Jim

Ford must  be as well, because i sent in a lead on myself and it came back thru salespoint to my dealership

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