New York
State law entitles a franchised dealer to retail-rate reimbursement on warranty parts and labor, and a 2024 amendment added something few states offer: labor time measured by the retail time guide you use for your own customers, not only the factory's flat times. Most New York stores have not touched either number.
N.Y. Veh. & Traf. Law § 465 · Procedures relating to warranties; compensation at retail
What you are owed
Retail rate
Parts and labor at your retail rate, with labor time allowed under the retail labor time guide you reasonably use for customer-paid work.
When it takes effect
30 days
A declared rate takes effect 30 days after submission. Claims must be approved or disapproved within 30 days of receipt and paid within 30 days of approval.
How often you may file
Once a year
You may not request a change to your reimbursement rate more than once in each calendar year. A weak request costs the year behind it.
Your declared rate
Presumed reasonable
The franchisor can rebut it only by showing it is unreasonable against all other same line-make dealers in your vicinity.
Why It Is Not A Form
New York gives you two levers, rate and time, and both have to be proven out of your own customer-paid repair orders. The statute decides which of that work counts and which does not. It is generous to dealers on paper, and a submission still has to survive a franchisor who reads it looking for the one line that does not hold.
New York's list of excluded work is shorter than many states', but several items are excluded only in some circumstances and not in others. Whether a line counts can depend on how it was written up, and a misread pulls your average the wrong way.
The 2024 amendment is the part most stores have not acted on. A filing that argues only the hourly rate, while warranty hours stay pinned to factory flat times, leaves the newer entitlement on the table.
Your rate is presumed reasonable, and the franchisor's way around that is a comparison with same line-make dealers near you. A rate you cannot support line by line is the one that comparison catches.
Because a change can be requested only once per calendar year, a submission that falls apart does not just fail. It leaves you on the old rate and the old time for another twelve months.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
Most retail-rate laws stop at the hourly rate, so a store can win the rate and still be underpaid on every job the factory times short. Since September 2024, New York lets a dealer claim warranty labor using the reasonable labor time allowances in the retail labor time guide it actually uses for customer-paid work.
The statute also keeps the process from being turned against you: the franchisor cannot impose an unduly burdensome or transaction-by-transaction method, and a minor clerical error is not, on its own, a reason to deny a legitimate claim. The entitlement is broad. Collecting it depends on a submission built to hold.
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 N.Y. Veh. & Traf. Law § 465 as published by the State of New York, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.