Utah
Since the 2023 Motor Vehicle Franchise Amendments, a Utah dealer is entitled to a retail labor rate and a retail parts markup on warranty work, and recall work is paid at the same retail rates. Plenty of stores are still being reimbursed as if none of that had passed.
Utah Code Ann. § 13-14-204 · Franchisor's obligations related to service; retail labor rate and parts markup
What you are owed
Retail rate
A retail labor rate and a retail parts markup, applied to warranty work and, by statute, to recall and campaign work too. Recall does not get a separate, lower number.
The franchisor's clock
30 days
If the franchisor thinks your submitted rate is too high, it has 30 days to say so, and any adjusted rate it proposes has to come from the same statutory formula you used.
How often you may file
Once a year, each
One change to your labor rate and one change to your parts markup in any 12-month period, each limited on its own. A failed submission waits a full year.
Recovering the cost
Prohibited
No fee, surcharge or other charge designed to recover what the franchisor now pays you for warranty repairs, and no clawing back recall costs through your incentive programs.
Why It Is Not A Form
Utah is one of the more precise statutes in the country. It defines exactly which repairs qualify, how the rate is measured and what the franchisor may do in response. Precision cuts both ways: the same rules that make a good submission hard to argue with make a careless one easy to adjust downward.
Utah removes a long list of repair categories from the definition of a qualified repair, and several of them are the high-volume, low-margin jobs that fill a service drive. Leave them in and your own numbers argue for a lower rate than you are owed.
If the franchisor contends your rate is substantially higher than what it pays you today, it can request more repair orders and put forward an adjusted rate of its own. A submission that leaves room for a different reading invites exactly that.
The statute is one layer. Your OEM applies its own policy on how a rate change is presented and which of its programs a filing touches. Where the two conflict, Utah law controls, but only if someone on your side knows where the conflict is.
Labor and parts are each limited to one change in 12 months. A weak labor submission does not just fail on its own terms. It locks in the old rate on that side for the year behind it.
The Part Most Dealers Miss
The worry that stops stores from filing is what the factory does afterward. Utah answered it in unusual detail. A chargeback is enforceable only for six months after the franchisor pays, it cannot be based on a nonmaterial clerical error, and a disallowance cannot be extrapolated from a sample across the rest of your claims.
Pair that with a ban on surcharges designed to recover warranty costs, and a ban on recovering recall costs by cutting your compensation or your incentive money, and the statute does most of the defending for you. What is left is a submission that holds up when the franchisor reads it.
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 Utah Code Ann. § 13-14-204 as published by the State of Utah, reviewed July 2026. Statutes change; we re-verify before every filing.