The way i figure it is we have the software and *most* of the knowledge to do it. Might as well make a new income stream when shops don't want to tow to dealer. It's a new facet of OEM programming other than keys I have enjoyed learning, for the most part    

Every tine I go on facebook now I am inundated with ads from idiots offering online training or CD packages for training. One guy talks about how much money he is gokng to make programming keys to.a Lexus, then proceeds to open the car by pumping the door. Yea, that's the guy you want to train you how to locksmith on cars. Edit:  As the wannabes take over more and more of the easy jobs, and drop the market prices, we will need to make out money taking on more of the work like Thomas is doing 

Just a small example how our trade is morphing into a whole new era.

I don't know how they pulled it off. Because when I called, I was quoted wholesale $3200 for a new transmission. Just for the part.  Final bill was $2,247.93 This was my 3rd Nissan transmission full replacement I programmed. The others were newer cvt.  Scary how easy it is to mess up a nissan flash tbh.  We were charging service + $250 to program. Probably going to up that to $350 for Nissan after this. If they want the convenience going to have to pay for it. Especially considering we generally have to buy a file on top of the $55 24hr. sub

That is scary. That seems like a mistake I could very easily make.  Any one of us who chooses to do this work can make a similar mistake (or even more costly) at any time  Hopefully we all have our price structures set at a level that we can absorb a setback such as this