True to His Word, Chip Perry is Revamping TrueCar
TrueCar, the prolific third-party car shopping site, is changing the way it does business in the hopes of mending dealer relations and reversing the company’s flagging fortunes.
When TrueCar president and CEO Chip Perry took the helm of the site last December, his stated goal was to make amends with ornery partners and bring the company out of a period of turmoil.
A pledge issued to members of the TrueCar Certified Dealer network on March 27 outlines a laundry list of changes aimed at improving transparency for consumers while bringing dealers onside.
“Our goal is to provide the best value for car buyers and dealers among all third-party automotive sites, but it was apparent to me that there were aspects of TrueCar’s service that were suboptimal,” Perry said.
“It was also apparent that we could make a series of modifications to improve the value we provide to dealers without diminishing in any way our usefulness to consumers.”
At the top of the list of changes is more accurate pricing information for vehicles and more local comparison pricing. Detailed information on dealer incentives will be provided, while estimated pricing from unnamed dealers will be scrubbed. Also, an outside monitor will make sure TrueCar doesn’t play fast and loose with data.
TrueCar’s subscription billing model will also be rolled out nationwide.
Perry said when he took over the vacated post, dealers let him have it, assailing him with their “brutally honest” opinion of TrueCar. That feedback laid the groundwork for the changes, one of which will be to purge the site and its advertising of language that casts dealers in a bad light
The news of the coming changes didn’t have a positive impact on TrueCar’s stock, which sank over four percent the morning after the announcement.
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Once again the unpaid contributors have to ask the hard questions and insert much needed skepticism and reasoned critique into what was otherwise little but a rewritten press release.
I look at TrueCar and the other sites such as Edmonds, KellyBlueBook, NADS Guides, and come up with a number that I think is the best realistic price I shouldn't pay more than. Than I stuck to that number, no matter how much the dealer cried, and before he let me walk out of the dealer, I got that number.