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 Stan Sher on December 23, 2011 at 8:26pm
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I will see what I can do. I am in to protest. I am right there in the area too.
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Comment by James A. Ziegler on December 23, 2011 at 8:08pm
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Thank you Eric, it appears we need to fire some information into the movers and shakers at Needham and company...I'm on it. :) Promise, I'll have the audience warmed up.
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Comment by Chris Saraceno on December 23, 2011 at 3:17pm
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The World Record for the Most Views EVER on a Automotive Social Site continues to grow ! 22,453, will this hit 30,000 views?
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 23, 2011 at 2:40pm -
Massachusetts has settled for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines in the past.
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Comment by Mike Warwick on December 23, 2011 at 2:34pm
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The Massachusetts Dealer Association strengthened their previous message to dealers warning that Truecar was not adequately disclosing the terms of the deal on their website and warned the dealers that they could be held accountable by the Attorney General's office. It also referenced how stiff some of the penalties could be for not complying with the full disclosure regulations. I have not heard of a fine being levied yet but this state loves free income and punishing car dealers so it wouldn't surprise me if someone has already been whacked.
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Comment by Jerry Thibeau on December 23, 2011 at 2:06pm
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Jim,
No need to apologize! There are no rules in war! Your instincts about the Autonation relationship is something I've been questioning this whole time. There is something more sinister happening here than any of us know.
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I apologize to everyone that I broke one of my own rules and fired back at Michael Timmons the TrueCar executive.
Also I put up a Pinocchio Photoshop picture, which I also took down, that too is ordinarily not my style, although it was funny.
I feel bad because I know the only reason a TrueCar representative would show up here is to engage us. There's an old saying... "Never wrestle with pigs. You'll only get dirty...and the pig likes it."
BUT, when Timmons surfaced briefly I saw something that bears a lot of renewed attention...
Taken from Mr. Timmon's job description he posted on his LinkedIn page.
~The next milestone will be the launch of TrueTrade, a division dedicated to empowering consumers with valid trade values and assisting with the disposition of their current vehicles. Our vision is to help empower both the consumer and the marketplace by providing clarity through price transparency so that people can buy and sell cars with confidence.~
He's an ex-AutoNation top executive still living in AutoNation headquarters town... Mike Maroone president of Autonation, still on the board at Truecar? Notice the introduction of the next step in Truecar evolution he mentions "TrueTrade" launch coming?
In the beginning there was speculation that TrueCar might be an AutoNation grab for the entire retail business, are we revisiting that now?
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I heard a rumor today that a good size dealer in Massachusetts was fined for advertising violations using TrueCar. I do not want to say a name, but perhaps the source who gave me this info can shed more light on this. Anyone heard about this?
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Comment by Keith Shetterly on December 22, 2011 at 10:28pm
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So, just so you can see yet another condescending "we just don't get it" TrueCar incident, this time on Jim's profile page here at DE involving an AutoNation officer:
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Comment by Stick Bogart on December 22, 2011 at 7:40pm
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hey James A. Ziegler I have the lady's name and number that heads up the marketing for Penske Automotive if you need or want her name and number just let me know
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