Connecticut
Connecticut lets a franchised dealer declare its own retail labor rate and parts markup, presumes that declaration fair and reasonable, and allows it twice in a calendar year where most states allow once. The right is generous. Most stores are still paid against a rate set long before anyone read it.
Conn. Gen. Stat. § 42-133s · Retail rate for warranty parts and labor; establishment and rebuttal
Your declared rate
Presumed fair
The labor rate and parts markup you declare are presumed fair and reasonable. The manufacturer must reasonably substantiate otherwise to overturn them.
The manufacturer's clock
30 days
The manufacturer has 30 days to rebut. Absent a timely rebuttal or protest, the new rate takes effect 30 days after you submit it.
How often you may file
Twice a year
A dealer may declare an average labor rate or parts markup up to twice in one calendar year. Twice the chances, and twice the ways to set a weak number.
Recovering the cost
Prohibited
No wholesale price increase or surcharge imposed solely to recover what the manufacturer now pays you for warranty parts and labor.
Why It Is Not A Form
Connecticut does not give you a rate. It lets you declare one from your own nonwarranty, customer-paid repair orders, and it treats labor and parts differently in ways that are easy to miss. The presumption protects a declaration that was built correctly. It does very little for one that was not.
Connecticut's statute sets up the labor rate and the parts markup on different footings. A dealer who assumes one approach covers both has built half the declaration on the wrong foundation.
A rebuttal is measured against the practices of other same line-make franchised dealers in your vicinity. A declared rate that cannot explain itself against that comparison is the one the manufacturer chooses to fight.
Connecticut names a short list of excluded work and is silent on much that OEM policy treats as excluded anyway. Where the statute is silent, the manufacturer's definition tends to fill the gap, and that is a judgment call per brand.
A second declaration in the same year is only useful if the first one did not burn it. A rate set too low early in the year can leave a store chasing its own mistake rather than raising its rate.
What Makes Connecticut Different
Connecticut stacks two dealer-friendly features that most states offer one at a time, if at all. Your declared rate is presumed fair and reasonable, and the manufacturer has 30 days to reasonably substantiate that it is not. And where most statutes allow one declaration a year, Connecticut allows two.
The manufacturer also cannot demand part-by-part or transaction-by-transaction substantiation, cannot recover the cost through a wholesale price increase or surcharge aimed solely at it, and under a separate section cannot withhold approved payment for more than 30 days. Protests go to the commissioner. The advantage belongs to the dealer whose declaration is ready for that.
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 Conn. Gen. Stat. § 42-133s as published by the State of Connecticut, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.