Arkansas
Arkansas entitles franchised dealers to be paid for warranty labor and parts at the rates they charge their own retail customers. The statute is generous on timing and silent on cost recovery, which means how you file matters as much as whether you file.
Ark. Code Ann. § 23-112-313 · Warranty agreements; compensation at the retail rate
What you are owed
Retail rate
Warranty labor and parts paid at your retail labor rate and retail parts markup, measured against what your retail customers pay for like work.
The manufacturer's clock
45 days
The manufacturer must approve or disapprove your rate change request within 45 days of receiving it. If it does neither, the request is approved.
How often you may file
No statutory cap
Unlike most states, Arkansas sets no once-a-year limit on requesting a labor rate or parts markup change. A miss is not a twelve-month sentence.
Recovering the cost
Not addressed
The warranty statute contains no specific ban on a manufacturer recouping the increase, by surcharge or otherwise. That is a risk to plan for, not a reason to stay on the old rate.
Why It Is Not A Form
Arkansas lets you prove a rate from customer-pay repair orders paid by retail customers, and it takes a broad view of what counts as routine maintenance and stays out. The deemed approval is real, and so is the manufacturer's right to ask for more documentation when your number moves a long way from the one on record.
Arkansas removes routine maintenance from the calculation and spells out what it means in a list that reaches further than many dealers expect, with exceptions inside it. Read it loosely and you will count work that drags your average down, or leave out work that should have counted.
If the rate you submit is substantially higher or lower than the rate on record, the manufacturer may ask for additional documentation. A submission that cannot answer that request cleanly loses the advantage of the deemed-approval clock.
Because the warranty statute does not specifically stop a manufacturer from recouping the increase, the stores that come out ahead are the ones whose rate is beyond argument. A defensible number is what makes the increase worth keeping.
With no annual cap, it is tempting to file early and fix it later. Each request still restarts the factory's review, and a pattern of weak requests is a poor foundation for the one that really needs to land.
What Makes Arkansas Different
Most retail-rate states allow one attempt a year. Arkansas sets no statutory cap on how often a dealer may request a labor rate or parts markup change, and it gives the manufacturer 45 days to respond. If it neither approves nor disapproves in that window, your request is deemed approved.
That flexibility comes with a gap. The Arkansas warranty statute does not carry the cost-recovery ban found in many other states, so the protection is in the strength of the filing itself. A rate built so it does not invite a second look is the one worth filing.
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 Ark. Code Ann. § 23-112-313 as published by the State of Arkansas, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.