Montana
Montana entitles a franchised dealer to warranty reimbursement at the prevailing retail rate it charges its own customers, and lets the dealer elect its own retail labor time guide. A franchisor that wants to contest your rate cannot simply say no. It has to prove why, in writing, on a deadline.
Mont. Code Ann. § 61-4-213 · Warranty reimbursement at the prevailing retail rate
What you are owed
Retail rate
Labor and parts at your prevailing retail rate, with engine, transmission and other assemblies expressly counted as parts. You may elect your own retail labor time guide.
The franchisor's clock
30 days
Your rate takes effect 30 days after submission unless the franchisor objects in time that it is materially inaccurate, and backs that up.
How often you may file
Once a year, each
Labor rate and parts markup are limited separately, each to once in any 12-month period. Two rights, and two chances to get one wrong.
Recovering the cost
Prohibited
No reduction in amounts owed, no separate charge or surcharge, and no increase to the wholesale price of vehicles or parts to win the money back.
Why It Is Not A Form
Montana does not hand you a rate. You prove it out of your own customer-pay repairs of the kind warranty would have covered, under a definition that leaves out a long list of work. The statute is generous to the dealer once the rate is established. Establishing it is the part that takes judgment.
Montana counts only qualified repairs, and the definition carves out a long list of categories, some of which other states let stay in. Leave the wrong work in and the franchisor's objection writes itself. Take too much out and you have underpriced your own store.
Montana lets you choose between the franchisor's labor time guide and your own retail guide for warranty labor. That choice moves real money, and the right answer depends on how your store actually writes up customer-pay work.
A franchisor that objects must send a full explanation, its evidence, its calculations and a proposed adjusted rate. If your submission does not hold together line by line, it will be answering a document that does.
Because labor and parts are each limited to once in any 12-month period, a weak submission on either one costs you a year on that side. Filing them out of step without a reason is easy to do and hard to undo.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
In Montana the burden of a contested rate does not fall on the dealer by default. Your rate takes effect 30 days after submission unless the franchisor objects in time, and an objection has to come with a full explanation, substantiating evidence, all of its calculations and a proposed adjusted rate. A refusal without that is not an objection the statute recognizes.
The protections around it are broad. The franchisor cannot recover the cost through a surcharge or a higher wholesale price on vehicles or parts, cannot create special part numbers that pay you less, and cannot audit a paid claim after 12 months. The law is on your side. What decides it is whether your numbers are stronger than theirs.
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 Mont. Code Ann. § 61-4-213 as published by the State of Montana, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.