By Jeff Sanford
Toronto, Ontario — August 4, 2015 — There is much interest in the new General Motors parts initiative, mypricelink.com. Essentially, the program is intended to provide OE parts at prices that match those of the aftermarket. Those looking for information on this new program will also want to take note of an upcoming Guild 21 conference call.
General Motors, of course, announced earlier this year that the company plans to roll out a new pricing system for its OE collision parts. The parts will be sold through mypricelink.com. The project represents a concerted effort on the part of GM to take back market share from aftermarket parts makers.
The program does away with the old list prices on GM collision parts and will try to price parts to be more competitive with aftermarket parts. The new marketplace will offer upfront quotes right away, in real-time during the estimating process.
Currently, GM is conducting pilots of the program to makes sure it works with major estimating systems AudaExplore, Mitchell and CCC, as well as DMS companies. The plan is to launch the new marketplace in the fourth quarter of this year.
The program will be launched in the US first. Robert Wheeler, a spokesman for GM, told Collision Repair magazine that “no decision” has been made yet about whether this program will be launched in Canada as well.
Those interested in learning more about the program can register for a conference call held by Guild 21. The call takes place August 13 at 2 pm EST.
Guild 21 is an organization dedicated to helping the collision industry be responsible to clients. Guild 21 holds regular conference calls on various topics of industry to the collision repair industry.
The August 13 conference call will be dedicated to what the launch of mypricelink.com means for repairers. The call will feature two speakers, Kris Mayer, General Director for General Motors Customer Care and Aftersales’ dealer wholesale channel, and Sean Carey of SCG Management Consultants. The two will discuss what this new marketplace will mean for the collision repair sector.
There have been suggestions that the new method could create more work for GM dealerships’ parts departments, which will get collision parts pricing from MyPriceLink, rather than through their dealer management system. That will require dealers to transfer the prices from MyPriceLink into the DMS invoice. GM hosted a panel discussion on its new collision parts marketplace at the recent NACE show in Detroit.
To register for the Guild 21 conference call, please visit myaccount.maestroconference.com/conference/register/FASEZ4GMH0YS1CHK.
