Arizona
Arizona entitles franchised dealers to warranty reimbursement at their declared retail rate for parts and labor, and it puts the burden on the manufacturer, not on you. Even so, most Arizona stores are still paid against an old number, because nobody has declared a new one.
A.R.S. § 28-4451 · Warranty obligations; retail rate declaration for parts and labor
Your declared rate
Presumed fair
Once declared, your retail labor rate and parts markup are presumed fair and reasonable. Overturning that presumption is the manufacturer's job, not yours.
The manufacturer's clock
30 days
The manufacturer has 30 days to rebut the presumption, and it must do so by comparison to similarly situated dealers of the same line-make in Arizona.
How often you may file
Once per 12 months
A dealer may not declare a new retail rate more than once in any twelve-month period. A weak declaration holds for the full year.
Retaliation and cost recovery
Prohibited
The manufacturer may not recover any of the cost through a reduced payment, surcharge, fee or chargeback, or threaten to cut what it owes because you filed.
Why It Is Not A Form
A presumption is only as strong as the declaration underneath it. Arizona lets you prove your rate from your own nonwarranty, customer-paid repair orders, and the manufacturer's rebuttal goes straight at whatever in that declaration it can compare unfavorably to other Arizona dealers. The statute is dealer-friendly. A careless submission still gives the factory an opening.
Arizona excludes less work from the calculation than many states. That widens what you may count, and it also means the judgment calls that are left carry more weight, because there is less statutory text to lean on when the factory disagrees.
The manufacturer rebuts by pointing at similarly situated same line-make dealers in the state. If your declaration cannot explain why your number is yours, the comparison does the explaining for you.
The statute sets the floor. Each manufacturer layers its own rules about what qualifies and how a declaration must be presented, and those rules are not in the statute.
Arizona allows one new declaration in any twelve-month period. A rate that comes in low, or gets rebutted, is the rate you live with until the window opens again.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
In most negotiations with a manufacturer, the dealer is the one explaining. Arizona reverses that. The retail rate you declare is presumed fair and reasonable, and the manufacturer has 30 days to rebut it, using a specific yardstick: similarly situated dealers of the same line-make in Arizona.
The statute also takes away the usual leverage. The manufacturer cannot recover the cost through a reduced payment, chargeback, surcharge or fee, cannot threaten to reduce what it owes because you filed, and cannot deny a properly submitted claim over an incidental processing slip. What is left is whether your declaration holds up.
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.
Most filings come back in 45 to 60 days. That depends heavily on the manufacturer, and on whether they ask for additional repair orders before they answer, which every statute allows them to do.
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 A.R.S. § 28-4451 as published by the State of Arizona, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.