North Dakota
State law entitles a franchised dealer to warranty compensation no lower than its average retail rate, measured against the time guide it uses for its own customers. Since the 2025 rewrite, a manufacturer that disputes your proposed rate has to start paying it anyway. Most North Dakota stores are still paid at a number set long before that change.
N.D. Cent. Code § 51-07-29 · Warranty work compensation at the dealer's retail rate
What you are owed
Retail rate
Warranty labor may not be paid below your average retail rate for like service, measured against the time guide you use for customer-paid work. Parts may not be paid below your average retail markup.
While they dispute it
Paid at your rate
If the manufacturer contests your proposed labor rate or parts markup, it must commence paying the proposed adjusted rate while the dispute is pending.
How often it can move
Once in 12 months
Neither side may demand a recalculation within twelve months of your last declaration. That protects your rate, and it also means a weak one stays in place.
Recovering the cost
Prohibited
No separate charge, surcharge, cost-recovery fee or other imposition aimed at recovering what retail-rate reimbursement costs the manufacturer.
Why It Is Not A Form
North Dakota does not hand you a rate. You prove one out of your own customer-paid repair orders, and the 2025 amendment rewrote the rules for which of that work counts. The proof is still yours to build, and it has to survive a manufacturer that keeps its audit and chargeback rights.
North Dakota now removes a long list of work from the calculation, including some categories that are excluded only in certain circumstances. A filing built on the old reading, or on a quick one of the new text, counts work the statute leaves out.
The statute ties warranty labor to the time guide you use for nonwarranty customers, and you establish which guide that is by written notice. A store that never names its guide leaves that half of the entitlement undefined.
The manufacturer has to pay your proposed rate while it contests it, and it keeps the right to audit and charge back under state law. A rate that does not hold up can still be unwound, along with what was paid on it.
Once you declare, neither you nor the manufacturer may demand a recalculation for twelve months. A rate set too low is a year of underpayment you have already agreed to.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
A contested rate can mean months on the old number while the argument plays out, and that delay is often what makes a filing feel not worth the trouble. North Dakota's 2025 amendment changed that. When a manufacturer disputes your proposed labor rate or parts markup, it must commence paying the proposed adjusted rate while the dispute is pending.
Add the ban on surcharges and cost-recovery fees, and the usual reasons to hold off mostly disappear. What is left is the part that decides the outcome: a rate built well enough that it is still standing when the dispute is over.
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.D. Cent. Code § 51-07-29 as published by the State of North Dakota, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.