Massachusetts
Chapter 93B entitles a franchised dealer to warranty compensation at the retail rate it customarily charges, and it treats the rate you declare as fair and reasonable from the start. A manufacturer that disagrees carries the burden. Most Massachusetts stores have never put that presumption to work.
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93B, § 9 · Warranty compensation at the retail rate customarily charged
What you are owed
Retail rate
Labor and parts are measured against what you customarily charge retail customers, and diagnosis time counts as labor.
Your declared rate
Presumed fair
The rate you declare is presumed fair and reasonable. If the manufacturer challenges it, the burden of proving it inaccurate or unreasonable is theirs.
When it takes effect
30 days
A declared rate takes effect 30 days after you declare it. The manufacturer has to act inside that window if it means to fight it.
How often you may file
Once a year
One declaration of labor rate or parts markup per calendar year. A declaration that goes in weak is the one you live with until January.
Why It Is Not A Form
Massachusetts hands the dealer a presumption, not a number. You still have to arrive at the rate from your own nonwarranty, customer-paid repair orders, under rules that decide which of them qualify, and the parts side carries a qualifying test of its own. The presumption protects a rate that holds together. It does not rescue one that does not.
Massachusetts excludes unusually little from the calculation, which means more of your work counts here than in most states. It also means the work you leave in has to be right, because the sample itself still has to qualify. Stores that assume a short list means anything goes tend to hand the manufacturer its rebuttal.
Massachusetts lets the parts markup be agreed in a writing separate from the franchise agreement, and gives the dealer a route to declare it if no agreement is reached within 30 days of the request. Which path you are on, and what you have already signed, changes what you are entitled to.
The statute bars the manufacturer from influencing your retail pricing and from imposing unduly burdensome documentation. Your OEM still brings its own submission requirements, and telling the ones it can enforce from the ones the statute has already taken away is not in the text.
Because Massachusetts allows a single declaration per calendar year, a weak one does not merely fail. It costs you the year behind it, paid at the rate you were trying to leave.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
In most negotiations the dealer has to convince the factory. Massachusetts reverses that. The rate you declare is presumed fair and reasonable, and a manufacturer that wants to reduce it has to prove it is inaccurate or unreasonable. The statute also forbids the manufacturer from requiring, influencing or attempting to influence the retail prices you charge, so the rate you are measured against stays yours.
It goes further on parts: the manufacturer cannot route warranty or recall parts through special part numbers that pay you less. A presumption that strong is worth a great deal, but only to a declaration built to stand up when someone finally tests it.
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 Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93B, § 9 as published by the State of Massachusetts, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.