Idaho
Since 2023, Idaho has let a franchised dealer declare its own warranty schedule of compensation from its customer-paid work, and the law presumes that schedule is fair and reasonable. Most Idaho stores have not used it, and are still settling warranty at a number that predates the change.
Idaho Code § 49-1626 · Payment for delivery preparation and warranty service
What you are owed
Retail rate
Warranty parts and labor measured against what you charge your retail customers for similar work, including reasonable compensation for diagnosis time.
Your declared schedule
Presumed fair
Once declared, your schedule is presumed fair and reasonable. The manufacturer can only overcome that by showing it is unreasonable next to competing franchises in your area.
How often you may file
Once a year
A change to your schedule of compensation may be requested no more than once every twelve months. A weak first attempt is the only attempt that year.
Recovering the cost
Prohibited
No reducing what is due to you, and no separate charge, surcharge or other imposition to win back what the higher rate costs them.
Why It Is Not A Form
Idaho does not compute a rate for you. It requires you to prove one out of your own customer-paid repair orders, under a statutory list of work that does not count. The presumption only protects a schedule that was built correctly in the first place, and that is where filings are won or lost.
The 2023 amendment wrote a detailed list of excluded work into the statute, and some of it is work a busy store does every day. Leave it in and you have lowered your own number before the presumption ever gets to work for you.
The manufacturer's one route around the presumption is comparing you to competing franchises in your area. A schedule that cannot stand next to that comparison gives them the opening the law otherwise closes.
Your OEM layers its own submission requirements and its own view of qualifying work over the statute. Where they disagree, the conservative reading tends to be the one that survives, and that is a per-brand judgment the statute does not make for you.
Idaho allows a single change to your schedule each year. A filing that falls apart does not just fail. It leaves you a year at the rate you were trying to leave behind.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
Under Idaho's declare-and-presume model there is no factory formula to argue with. You declare your schedule from your own customer-paid work and the statute presumes it is fair and reasonable. The manufacturer's only answer is to show it is unreasonable next to competing franchises in your geographic area.
Around that presumption, Idaho stacks real protection. The factory cannot recover the cost by reducing what it owes you or by any surcharge, and a warranty claim it does not disapprove in writing within 30 days is deemed approved. The law is on the dealer's side. What decides the outcome is a schedule that 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 Idaho Code § 49-1626 as published by the State of Idaho, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.