Missouri
State law entitles a franchised dealer to be reimbursed for warranty parts and labor at the rates you actually charge your own customers. Most stores in Missouri are still being paid against a number someone agreed to years ago, and every repair order since has been settled at that number.
Mo. Rev. Stat. § 407.828 · Franchisor duties — warranty compensation at retail rate
What you are owed
Retail rate
Not a negotiated number and not whatever you agreed to years ago. The principal factor is the prevailing rates you yourself charge retail customers for similar nonwarranty labor, service and parts.
The franchisor's clock
30 days
A claim not specifically disapproved in writing within 30 days of receipt is considered approved, and payment follows within 15 days after that.
How often you may file
Twice a year
Missouri permits two rate requests in one calendar year. That is the widest margin of any state we file in, and it is still not a rehearsal.
What they cannot demand
Line-by-line proof
The franchisor cannot require part-by-part or transaction-by-transaction calculations, or any other method unduly time consuming to produce.
Why It Is Not A Form
Missouri does not hand you a rate. It requires you to prove one out of your own customer-pay repair orders, under rules that decide which of that work counts and which of it quietly drags your average down. The statute is short. The judgment inside it is not, and it is where filings fail.
Most states pull the cheap work out of the calculation. Missouri does that and also removes some of the largest-ticket repairs you write all year. A store that assumes the carve-outs only touch oil changes builds its rate on the wrong half of its own business, and the number comes back low without anyone explaining why.
The statute is one layer. Your OEM applies its own view of what counts as qualifying repair labor and which of its brands a filing has to prove the rate against. Where the two disagree, the conservative reading is the one that survives, and knowing which is which per manufacturer is not in the statute.
Missouri spares you the line-by-line accounting a franchisor would otherwise demand. It does not spare you from having to be right. What you submit still has to hold together as a picture of what this store genuinely charges, and assembling something that does is a different job from running a report.
Two requests a year sounds like room to experiment, and it is the reason Missouri stores file loose submissions that better states would never see. A failed first attempt tells the franchisor exactly what you are willing to submit and exactly where your numbers are soft, then you spend your only remaining request that year arguing against your own first draft.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
Once a claim lands, the franchisor has 30 days to disapprove it in writing. Let that window pass in silence and the claim is considered approved, with payment due 15 days later. Missouri also refuses to let a franchisor bury you in method, barring the part-by-part and transaction-by-transaction accounting that is used elsewhere to make a filing more trouble than the money is worth.
The law, in other words, is already on your side. What decides the outcome is whether what you put in front of them 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.
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 Mo. Rev. Stat. § 407.828 as published in the Revised Statutes of Missouri, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.