View CartI was on the phone with a locksmith earlier today who wanted to sign up for the Remotes Unlimited Premier Partner Program (see link here to program details). She was thinking about trying to keep one of every remote transmitter in stock in his shop. I told her that this could easily amount to over $50,000 worth of inventory. GM alone has used nearly a hundred different remotes for its factory keyless entry systems over the past two decades. And that is just for vehicles sold in North America. If you take a global perspective, the number is at least twice as high.
There have been numerous families of GM remotes with FCC IDs such as ABO0204T, ABO1502T, L2C0007T and OUC60270, to name just a few. Each family has anywhere from 5 to 15 distinct button configurations. And, in some cases, there are multiple parts with the same FCC ID number and button configuration that are not interchangeable. Even GM dealers do not understand what applications all of the replacement remotes in their inventory serve. I have had part managers at dealers tell me that when a customer needs a replacement remote, they just take a bunch of parts out to the service area and try to find one that works. That is why we always caution consumers to be very careful when buying a replacement car remote.
Some of this part proliferation is warranted by changing technology, marketing choices and the need to have different button configurations on remotes for different vehicles. We think much of it, however, is poor coordination among GM engineering teams and poor purchasing management. Just imagine the high capital cost imposed on GM dealers by carrying so much redundant inventory. And, of course, this all means higher costs for consumers. Consumers always pay for a business’s poor practices in the end.
Anyway, at the end of our conversation the locksmith decided to buy a rotary display for her store with 6 fast-moving consumer-packaged keyfobs and to buy the rest as special orders when needed. We applaud that decision.
