Texas
State law entitles a franchised dealer to warranty reimbursement at the rates it charges its own retail customers, and it lets you prove that rate two different ways and submit the better one. Most stores in Texas are still being paid against a number someone agreed to years ago.
Tex. Occ. Code § 2301.402 · Rate of compensation for warranty work at retail rate
What you are owed
Retail rate
Reimbursement for warranty work may not be less than what you charge your own customers for nonwarranty work of like kind. That covers labor and parts alike.
How you prove it
Two ways
Texas gives you two distinct methods of establishing the labor rate and lets you submit whichever produces the higher result. The choice is yours, not the manufacturer's.
Their window to answer
60 days
The adjustment process runs on a 60-day response, with a protest route to the board behind it if the answer is unreasonable.
How often you may file
Once a year
Absent agreement between the parties, an established warranty labor rate may not be adjusted more often than once a year.
Why It Is Not A Form
Texas does not hand you a rate. It requires you to prove one out of your own customer-pay repair orders, and because the statute says so little about what counts, the argument moves onto ground your manufacturer defines. That is where these filings are won and lost.
The right to prove your rate two ways is worth nothing if you only ever run one. The two do not track each other, and which one wins depends on how your store actually writes work through the year. Submit the weaker result and it is approved, and you have set your own ceiling for the next twelve months without ever seeing the number you gave up.
This is where Texas filings quietly lose. Manufacturers apply long carve-out lists here, and almost none of them come from the statute. Knowing which exclusions are law, which are your manufacturer's own policy, and which are simply being asserted at you is the difference between a rate you accepted and a rate you proved.
The statute is one layer, and in Texas it is a thin one, which means your OEM's own definitions carry more weight than they do elsewhere. Where the two disagree, the conservative reading is the one that survives. Knowing which is which, per manufacturer, is not in the statute.
Because the rate may not be adjusted more than once a year, a weak submission does not merely fail. It costs you the twelve months behind it, at the rate you were already unhappy with.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
Texas names exactly one statutory exclusion: routine maintenance. That is the whole list. Tires, batteries, alignments, discounted and menu-priced work, body and glass, sublet, the categories dealers in other states are used to surrendering without argument are simply not carved out by the Texas legislature.
When those items come out of a Texas submission, they come out because a manufacturer applied its own policy, not because the state required it. Knowing the difference is the whole game here, and it is the reason two stores on the same street can be paid very differently for identical work.
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 which exclusions your manufacturer is entitled to apply. We build the submission, you review it before it goes anywhere, and it goes out under a rate we are prepared to defend.
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 Tex. Occ. Code § 2301.402 as published in the Texas Occupations Code, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.