OEConnection
 

GM guys, watch your mail for a letter from OEC. You're about to get a surprise! And it ain't good.

I was paying $99 & taxes to list my inventory. Now, I've added a lot of width (more part numbers to become RIM compliant) so my PN count is up. The old price structure was $99/$129/$159 and $199 for the extremely large inventory. Well, today I found out that I'm now in the 2nd level, which used to be the $129 a month level. Wrong...it's now $159 a month, and the next level is $179, and the top level is $249. :shame: on OEC.... this is just another way to take profit from the dealers!

OEConnection is/was owned by the Detroit 3 at one time...not sure if thats the case anymore....it sure looks like the insurance companies own it now.

Thanks for the information - even if it is bad news. :rolleyes:

Sadly, my bet is what you've witnessed with OEConnection is something a lot of companies are thinking about - raising their prices.

With the closing of so many dealerships over the last two years many companies are going to be forced to raise their fees to maintain their revenues. Thankfully, some companies (ADP and R&R as an example) have too much competition to raise their prices and face the prospect of falling prices and declining market share.

GM doesn't have to own the company to make money.

I have had tire dealers come to me that were on the "on the roll" program that were willing to give up GM's profit to sell me tires. They were making more money than I was on a set of tires. I am sure they get kickbacks on all kinds of services.

I priced a Hunter alignment and balancer. The guy gave me a price and then wanted my address to send the contract to. Once he found out I was a factory store he said he couldn't sell it to me at that price. I thought it might be less. It was 6 to 7 grand more! It was blue instead of red though. The company was not stupid . He sold me the inferior red ones for 6k less when I faxed him a letter saying I would go elsewhere to buy if I didn't get the "special" price. He wasn't going to bite the hand that feeds him but he wasn't going to lose my biz. He says people catch that 5% of the time. My rep wanted to know where that was because he had some dealers holding off on some equipment. I am sure they were happy to pay less for red.

GM is smart. They quit trying to do factory run stores. Why have brick and mortar when you can control dealers through CSI and mark up hotel rooms, balancers, and special tools? Less cost, more profit....but don't tell Fritz that!

That's a great example and there are countless others.

Direct mail pieces, brochures, management training, etc. are all examples of profit centers for many of the OEMs.