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 David T. Gould on December 26, 2011 at 6:19pm
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From the Automotive News Article below: "Last week TrueCar said in a statement that it is "not a broker, traditional advertiser or lead generation company. We do not arrange or negotiate sales for dealers, nor do we advertise vehicles for sale. Rather, TrueCar is an Internet marketing company -- the dealer's window through the Internet to customers searching for vehicles."
Can you see where this is going? (Dealers get ready for the short end of the stick)
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/article/20111226/RETAIL07/312269958#ixzz1hg...
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Comment by David Blassingame on December 26, 2011 at 6:01pm
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 26, 2011 at 1:59pm
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It's all about high-tech identity theft by arrogant people who believe their superiority puts them above the law.
I already know the answer to the question I am about to ask but I want to see what this band of merry men has to say...
"Where does TrueCar, and all of the other data aggregators get the data OTHER than the Dealers' DMS ? You see we need to shut down ALL Data Resellers of customer information.
How can we do that, they're so big and well-financed?
"Oh the Places We Will Go' ~Dr. Seuss ~ Where is The Federal Trade Commission when you need them?
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Comment by Larry Muirhead on December 26, 2011 at 1:09pm
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@ Keith S. On AutoTrader.com Marketplace.
I put in everything I could... needs transmission service. One headlight out, needs front tires.
175K miles. Listed a previous accident / repaired total $3000... listed it all.. The questions on AutoTrader were extensive including when was the last time you did more than $200 repairs on the vehicles along with receipts.
The value came up at $2600. CLEARBOOK came up $900 more. The AutoTrader is far more accurate because of the line of questions that more accurately reflect ACV.
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Keith, I believe beta (2.0) refers to the software programming behind the site, not the site's active or inactive status. But thanks for the shout out. Keep up the good fight. dtg
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Comment by Mike Warwick on December 26, 2011 at 12:28pm
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2007 Nissan Altima 4 Cyl. with 48k has a recommended price on Clearbook of $12,180. This car in the Boston market has an average list price of $15,275. This should make for some disappointed customers who put their faith in the Clearbook price. Who is going to get the negative review from the disappointed customer, Clearbook or the dealer?
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Comment by Randy Fry on December 26, 2011 at 12:09pm
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i booked out a couple of recent trade ins and i dang sure would not own them for the amount that ClearBook states
,, for some reason it is alot higher than MMR, and even MMR can be high
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 26, 2011 at 11:53am -
David, it's not beta any longer: TrueCar Announces Release of Clearbook on Dec 5. They launched it and are advertising to it. www.clearbook.com
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Visit http://clearbook.truecar.com/ (beta) to get a glimpse at the future of used car / finance. The assumptions built into identical (new car) sales was bad enough. Here the world gets to view unqualified data and make huge assumptions. I know enough to be mortified, but not enough to make any statements of opinion or fact. Frame damage, branded titles and the like be damned. I don't understand how they can get away with this while dealers are held to almost impossible legal disclosure standards. But then again maybe I do. : (
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 26, 2011 at 11:19am
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@ Larry: I'd be interested in what AutoTrader's Trade-In Marketplace (TIM) says it is worth, if you have time to do that. Thanks!
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