dispute could require resolution through a Motor Vehicle Review Board protest. Regardless of which time allowance you select, IADA recommends that you contact your factory representative right away and request your increase. Some manufacturers are not adjusting their warranty time allowances until dealers submit a request. Your request can be as simple as the following: Pursuant to Section 6 of the Illinois Motor Vehicle Franchise Act, as amended by Public Act 102-232, (dealership name) requests to adopt (the manufacturer time guide multiplied by 1.5/name of extended warranty time guide) for warranty time allowances, effective immediately. Please contact me if you require additional information to implement the revised time allowance. While the new time allowances apply to warranty repairs, recall repairs, and stop-sale repairs, they are not likely to extend to extended warranty or goodwill repairs. Claim Submission At press time, there is still a wide variance between manufacturers when it comes to the ease of submitting warranty claims for the increased time allowances. Some manufacturers are up to speed on having a seamless way for Illinois dealers to claim the higher time allowances, while others waited until mid-January to start the programming process or are manually reviewing each warranty submission. With luck, the manufacturers who are slow to the table will decide that it is more efficient to program a computer to multiply by 1.5 than to hand review thousands of warranty submissions. No More “Gotcha!” Chargebacks The new warranty law added a provision that prohibits manufacturers from charging back on a dealer’s warranty claim, except when the manufacturer can show fraud or illegal actions by the dealer. This provision prevents a manufacturer from invalidating a dealer’s warranty submission based on a technical defect in the dealer’s submission. This chargeback provision will prevent manufacturers from dinging your account based on a technicality. Odds and Ends Following is a list of many of the more minor changes to the Illinois warranty law that dealers should be aware of, even though IADA has not heard about any disputes yet. • Manufacturers must compensate dealers for interest and storage costs for new vehicles subject to recall or stop-sale order that prevents the sale of a vehicle until the vehicle is repaired and ready for sale. • Manufacturers cannot reduce any warranty reimbursement payment based on pre-established market norms or market averages. • Manufacturers cannot place restrictions on repair frequency based on failure rate indexes or national failure averages. • A manufacturer cannot invalidate a timely submitted warranty claim solely because the unavailability of parts caused additional use and mileage on a vehicle. • Once a dealer submits a claim for warranty reimbursement, the manufacturer must approve or disapprove the claim within 30 days. If the manufacturer does not disapprove of a claim within 30 days, the claim is approved. Approved claims must be paid within 30 days after the approval date. As you can see, the new warranty laws represent a sea change for Illinois dealers. IADA extends its thanks to the many dealers who contacted their legislators to urge support for the warranty law and the Chicago Automobile Trade Association legislative team. We are STRONGER TOGETHER! With luck, the manufacturers who are slow to the table will decide that it is more efficient to program a computer to multiply by 1.5 than to hand review thousands of warranty submissions. 23
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