Alabama
State law entitles a franchised dealer to be reimbursed for warranty parts and labor at the prices you actually charge your own customers. Most stores in Alabama are still being paid against a number someone agreed to years ago, and every repair order since has been settled at that number.
Ala. Code § 8-20-7 · Warranty obligations to dealers — reasonable compensation at retail rate
What you are owed
Retail rate
Not a negotiated number and not whatever you agreed to years ago. Alabama measures compensation against the prices you charge your own retail customers for like work.
Where you start
Presumed reasonable
Your submitted labor rate and parts markup arrive presumed reasonable. The warrantor has to rebut that presumption, not simply decline it.
Their window to push back
45 days
If your calculated rate lands substantially away from the rate on record, the warrantor can ask for more repair orders and then has 45 days from receiving them to rebut.
How often you may file
Once a year
One establishment or modification per 12-month period, covering labor rate and parts markup together. There is no second attempt in the same year.
Why It Is Not A Form
Alabama does not hand you a rate. It requires you to prove one out of your own customer-pay repair orders, under rules that decide which of that work counts and which of it quietly drags your average down. The statute is short. The judgment inside it is not, and it is where filings fail.
Starting out presumed reasonable is the single best feature of Alabama's statute, and it is also the easiest thing to give away. The presumption attaches to what you submitted. Submit something that invites a closer look and you have handed the warrantor the opening the law otherwise denies it, along with the 45 days to use it.
Alabama pulls routine maintenance out of the calculation unless it rode along with a qualifying repair, and that carve-out is worded narrowly enough that reasonable people read it differently. Leave the wrong work in and you have averaged your own rate down before anyone has read a line of it.
The statute is one layer. Your OEM applies its own view of what counts as qualifying repair labor and which of its brands a filing has to prove the rate against. Where the two disagree, the conservative reading is the one that survives, and knowing which is which per manufacturer is not in the statute.
Whether your compensation is materially unreasonable is judged partly against the prevailing rates paid by similarly situated dealers in this state. That cuts both ways. A rate that is defensible in Birmingham and a rate that is defensible in a market a third the size are not the same number, and the submission has to know the difference.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
Alabama does not make you argue your way up from the rate you are being paid today. The rates you submit arrive presumed reasonable, and it falls to the warrantor to rebut that presumption inside a fixed window rather than simply decide it does not like your number.
The law, in other words, is already on your side. What decides the outcome is whether what you put in front of them holds up once they look.
We Do This For You
John Fairchild has run more than 400 warranty reimbursement filings himself. You do not pull the repair orders, decide what qualifies, or argue the categories. We build the submission, you review it before it goes anywhere, and it goes out under a rate we are prepared to defend.
And because your rate is proven out of your own customer-pay pricing, we do not stop when the letter is sent. The platform runs the daily discipline that protects that pricing all year, which is what decides how high you can go the next time you are allowed to ask.
No cost, no obligation. We will tell you the rate you could defend today and whether filing is worth running at all.
Summary of Ala. Code § 8-20-7 as published in the Code of Alabama, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.