Rhode Island
State law says warranty repairs and diagnostic work are reimbursed at the dealer retail rate in effect when the work is done, and it lets a dealer declare a new rate up to twice a calendar year. Most Rhode Island stores are still being paid at a rate set before anyone in the building looked at it.
R.I. Gen. Laws § 31-5.1-6 · Warranty agreement; reimbursement at the dealer retail rate
What you are owed
Retail rate
Warranty repairs and diagnostic work are reimbursed at the dealer retail rate in effect at the time the work is performed, for both parts and labor.
The manufacturer's clock
30 days
Your declared rate is presumed fair and reasonable. The manufacturer has 30 days to rebut it, and only by showing it is unfair against same line-make dealers in your vicinity.
How often you may declare
Twice a year
A dealer may declare an average parts markup or average labor rate up to twice in one calendar year, more room than most states allow.
Recovering the cost
Prohibited
No surcharge and no wholesale vehicle price increase aimed solely at recovering what retail reimbursement costs. Ordinary price increases in the normal course of business are still allowed.
Why It Is Not A Form
Rhode Island does not hand you a rate. You declare one, proven from your own non-warranty customer-paid repair orders, and the statute proves labor and parts on two different bases rather than one. The exclusions apply to both. The statute is compact, and the places it can go wrong are not obvious from reading it once.
Rhode Island does not build the labor rate and the parts markup from the same body of work. A submission that assumes they run on one basis, as they do in many neighboring states, is wrong on at least one of them before anyone reads it.
The list of work removed from the calculation is shorter than in many states, and it applies to labor and parts alike. It also reaches some work that dealers coming from other states do not expect to see excluded.
Your rate is presumed fair, and the manufacturer's only route around that is a 30-day rebuttal comparing you with same line-make dealers nearby. A number you cannot support line by line is the one that comparison catches.
Declaring twice a year gives you room to recover from a weak filing, but every month on the old rate is paid at the old rate. The second declaration does not refund the first.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
Most states give a dealer one declaration a year, which makes every filing a high-stakes event. Rhode Island allows two. A store whose customer-pay pricing moves during the year does not have to wait for January to be paid for it, and each declaration is presumed fair and reasonable unless the manufacturer rebuts it within 30 days.
The manufacturer also cannot recover that cost through a surcharge or a wholesale vehicle price increase aimed at it. The law gives you more chances than most. What decides whether each one pays is whether the rate behind it 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.
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 R.I. Gen. Laws § 31-5.1-6 as published by the State of Rhode Island, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.