Pennsylvania
State law entitles a franchised dealer to retail-rate reimbursement on warranty parts and labor, and if the manufacturer wants to fight your declared rate, it has to prove the rate wrong. Most Pennsylvania stores are still being paid at a nonretail number they never declared their way out of.
63 P.S. § 818.307 · Board of Vehicles Act; warranty repairs at the dealer's retail rate
What you are owed
Retail rate
Parts and labor at the retail rate you customarily charge, major assemblies included. Even parts the manufacturer supplies at no cost for recall, campaign or warranty work still earn your average markup.
The manufacturer's clock
60 days
The manufacturer has 60 days to rebut your declaration. Absent an audit or rebuttal in that window, your declared rate takes effect.
How often you may declare
Once a year
One declaration of your average parts markup or labor rate per calendar year. There is no second attempt if the first one does not hold.
Recovering the cost
Prohibited
No recovering retail reimbursement costs from you, whether through a higher wholesale price on vehicles or a surcharge aimed at recouping it.
Why It Is Not A Form
Pennsylvania does not hand you a rate. You declare one, proven out of your own nonwarranty customer-paid repair orders, and labor and parts are each drawn from that work under their own rules. The burden of disproving it shifts to the manufacturer only once you have declared something that stands up.
Pennsylvania excludes less work than many states, which means more of your repairs can count. The categories it does exclude include routine items that are excluded in some situations and not in others. Read them loosely and your own average drifts down.
Both come from your customer-paid repair orders, but the parts declaration carries a qualifier the labor declaration does not. A submission that treats them as one pool of work is easy to pick apart.
At a protest hearing the manufacturer has to prove your declared rate unreasonable or materially inaccurate. That protection is only as strong as the declaration in front of the hearing.
Because Pennsylvania permits a single declaration per calendar year, a weak one does not merely fail. It leaves you at the old rate for the twelve months behind it.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
Most dealers assume a rate request is something they have to win. In Pennsylvania the structure runs the other way. Once you declare, the manufacturer has 60 days to rebut, and if it takes the fight to a protest hearing, the burden of proving your rate unreasonable or materially inaccurate is on the manufacturer.
It cannot recover the cost by raising your wholesale vehicle price or adding a surcharge, and it owes your markup even on parts it hands you free for recall and warranty work. The statute already favors the dealer. What decides the outcome is a declaration that leaves them nothing to prove.
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 63 P.S. § 818.307 as published by the State of Pennsylvania, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.