Louisiana
Louisiana entitles a franchised dealer to warranty parts and labor at no less than its retail rate for like work. The rate you submit is presumed accurate and goes into effect 45 days after the manufacturer receives it unless they rebut it. If they protest and the Commission sides with you, the increase reaches back to that same date.
La. R.S. 32:1262 · Warranty; compensation; audits of dealer records
What you are owed
Retail rate
In no event less than your retail rate for like non-warranty work, for both parts and labor, measured from repairs your retail customers paid for.
The manufacturer's clock
45 days
Your submitted rate is presumed accurate and takes effect 45 days after receipt, unless the manufacturer rebuts it inside that window.
How often you may file
Once a year
One submission to establish or modify your parts markup, labor rate or both in any twelve-month period. A failed submission waits a year.
Recovering the cost
Prohibited
No chargeback, no surcharge, and no removal from or reduction under an incentive program to win back what your rate costs them.
Why It Is Not A Form
Louisiana does not give you a rate. It requires you to prove one from your own closed, customer-paid repair orders, under one of the longest lists of excluded work of any state. The presumption is strong, but it only attaches to a submission that was built on the right work to begin with.
Louisiana takes more than a dozen categories of work out of the calculation, and several of them are things your shop does every day. That list is long enough that two careful readers will not agree on the first pass, and every miss shows up as a lower rate.
The statute also says what does count, including some customer-pay repairs that stores routinely drop because they look like warranty. Overcorrecting on the exclusions costs you as surely as missing them.
To overcome the presumption the manufacturer has to show your rate is materially inaccurate. That is their burden, but it is a burden they can meet if what you submitted does not hold together line by line.
Louisiana permits one submission in any twelve-month period. A weak one does not merely fail. It holds your store at the old rate for the year behind it.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
A contested rate can be money lost every month the dispute runs. Louisiana closes that gap. If the manufacturer protests to the Louisiana Motor Vehicle Commission, it bears the burden of proving your rate was materially inaccurate, and if the Commission decides for you, the increase is effective retroactively to 45 days after the manufacturer received your original submission.
And it cannot punish you for asking. The manufacturer may not reduce what it owes you because you filed, whether by chargeback, surcharge or a cut to your incentive programs. The statute already protects the store that files. What decides the outcome is a submission 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 La. R.S. 32:1262 as published by the State of Louisiana, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.