Hello fellow locksmith. We’ve basically given up on selling residential Smart Locks and Padlocks in our shop. For pretty much the same reasons you’ve described. Our prices would be outrageously higher.
Fortunately we deal in car keys, and dealerships still give us plenty of breathing room to beat them on parts, service, and lead times.
Boneses@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
I so desperately want to expand our capabilities on doing car keys but my boss is allergic to spending money. It really seems like a no brainer when the dealerships change an arm and a leg we could easily beat their prices.
SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Assuming you’ve got a sidewinder cutter it’s worth researching GM’s onboard programming. You can do most vehicles older than 2023 without a programmer.
Boneses@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
Yeah we have a sidewinder cutter and a silca RW4 cloner so we can do on board programming and clone a decent amount of the transponder keys but I want my boss to get a programmer so we can actually do remotes and prox keys because we get people asking about them a lot.
SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
If you have a cutter and cloner theres almost no reason to not grab a SmartPro or Autel. It’d pay for itself in less than a year.