March 27, 2016

Our Pledge to Dealers

When I arrived at TrueCar in December, it was apparent to me that the biggest issue facing the company was the need to make TrueCar a more positive place for dealers to do business. Over the past decade, TrueCar has been successful in attracting car buyers, but its overall approach has alienated many dealers across the country.

So my first order of business was to go straight to the source. I met with dozens of dealers of all sizes and asked them what they like and don’t like about working with TrueCar. They gave me an earful of their honest—sometimes brutally honest—opinions. I knew even before I joined TrueCar that big changes were needed, but hearing very directly about the concerns of dealers helped me formulate a new direction for TrueCar, one that is designed to make our marketplace produce a win-win for both consumers and dealers. Some of the changes requested by dealers have already been made, some will happen over the next three months, and the rest will roll out over the balance of the year.

Below are the top three areas of concern expressed by dealers, and the actions we’re taking to address them. I invite you to review our new Dealer Pledge and complete list of action items at truecar.com/pledge.

• We’re making major changes in our product offering to address concerns that TrueCar does some things that hurt dealer profitability and put “sand in the gears” of some transactions. To accomplish this, we are moving to reduce the use of TrueCar as a purely price-driven shopping tool and enable dealers to compete on factors other than price.

• We’re addressing your concerns about how we treat you as customers by redesigning our data policies, billing model, and billing practices. We are also hiring over 100 Field Service Consultants to help dealers make better use of our tools and close more sales.

• We’re cleaning up our consumer-facing advertising and website language
by creating more balanced messaging that positions dealers in a positive light.

Additionally, we would like to clarify our intentions regarding potential future F&I and Trade-In products. Please know that
we will only support indirect finance and will not offer third-party direct finance products through TrueCar.com. In addition,
any Trade-In product we introduce will be based on a well-accepted wholesale valuation and will be offered on a dealer
opt-in basis. We hope that these clarifications will alleviate any concern that dealers may have about TrueCar’s future
product offerings.

We take these promises very seriously and we fully expect you to hold us accountable for delivering on them. The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding. As we proceed, we will keep listening to dealers and we will be making even more changes based on your ongoing feedback. If you would ever like to discuss any part of our Dealer Pledge, please feel free to contact me—I am always interested in hearing about how we can make TrueCar work better for everyone in our industry.

For dealers who are now using TrueCar, thank you for your business, and for those who aren’t, we hope you will consider
us in the future.

Sincerely,
Chip Perry, President & CEO
chip.perry@truecar.com

Chip Perry's Pledge

Pledge Details