There’s always a chance your new car buying experience can go horribly wrong. Your new vehicle may leave the lot with unfixable problems you never saw coming. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates 150,000 vehicles sold every year in the United States contain problems like these. These “lemon” vehicles can come from any manufacturer, including domestic companies like GM or overseas ones including Honda and Volkswagen. Defects can affect any part of the vehicle, ranging from slight cosmetic or comfort issues to major problems with the engine or safety systems. Any number of causes can create these problems, including faulty components, substandard materials or even simple human error during the manufacturing process. No matter what caused the problems, though, one thing remains clear – the manufacturer must make the problem right.
Lemon laws, or breach of warranty laws, provide American consumers and their attorneys the legal tools they need to seek satisfaction in a court of law. One factor all successful lemon law claims have in common is detailed, extensive documentation. Getting your purchase documents and repair records to your lemon law attorney quickly helps them establish a solid foundation to your claim.
One of the first things your lemon law lawyer will ask for after signing you as a client is your purchase documents and repair records. They may also ask for a written copy of the original manufacturer’s warranty. These are all the documents you’ve collected since you purchased the vehicle and every record of every repair attempt. Every time you take the vehicle back to the dealership or a manufacturer’s repair center, you should ask for and keep written records of every repair attempt. This documentation forms the foundation of your lemon law claim. Your attorney will ask for all these records and won’t even begin the claims process until they’ve had time to go over the documents in detail.
For more information on arbitration and other frequently asked lemon law questions, click here.
Digitizing these records will benefit you and your lemon law claim greatly over time. The fastest way to get these documents to your attorney is via email, so scanning them and saving them to both your personal device and into cloud storage will benefit your claim. Paper documents can get lost in your home or in the mail, so having digital copies on hand can save hours of headaches. Uploading them to cloud storage means you can access your records on any internet-connected device and send them to your attorney easily.
Scanning your purchase documents and repair records can be as easy as using a flatbed scanner. However, many don’t have access to such a device at home. Shipping stores like UPS or FedEx often have scanners at their retail locations and employees can help you get your documents scanned and stored on your personal storage media or cloud storage.
There are also several smartphone apps that let you use its camera to scan documents, turning them not just into digital images but searchable, editable digital documents. This will help your lemon law attorney immensely as they can interact with these files more easily.
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Before contacting a lemon law attorney, it would help to know whether your vehicle qualifies. Most importantly, the vehicle must still be covered by its original manufacturer’s warranty. Lemon law protection hinges on warranties; without a warranty, the consumer has no basis for legal protection. Most warranty periods expire long before a vehicle is resold on the used car market, meaning used cars are almost always not covered.
Contacting a lemon law attorney is the single best step you can take for the health of your lemon law claim. Lemon law attorneys know the fine details of state and federal lemon law and have experience dealing with your vehicle’s specific manufacturer.
Having a trusted, tested lemon law attorney looking out for your rights protects you not only from your manufacturer, but from your own forgetfulness. Lemon lawyers know how deadlines and statutes of limitations work and will stay on top of your case to make sure your case isn’t compromised because of a missed deadline.
Lemon laws are confusing. Read our guide to the lemon law complaint process.
“Even the simplest things in the law can be complicated because if you miss the timeline, you could lose it all,” said attorney Allen Stewart. “If you file the wrong paperwork, it could set you back time and money, and you might lose the case.”
Lemon law attorney Andrew Ross said qualified lemon lawyers know how auto manufacturers operate when confronted with lemon law claims and know how to work with and around them to make sure consumers get the compensation to which they are entitled.
“If you’re missing some of those things, or if you don’t follow certain rules, your claim can be completely tossed out,” Ross said. “You run the risk of having your case thrown out or getting a judgement that prevents you from trying to present your case again.”
Consumers looking for a lemon law attorney should conduct detailed research on lemon law firms, looking for positive online reviews as well as extensive legal and educational backgrounds on the attorneys working there. While you should check to see what states the attorneys are licensed for, the attorney can tell you whether they can or can’t take your claim for any reason, including whether or not they are licensed to practice in your state.
Each state has its own specific criteria determining what makes a vehicle a lemon. Vehicles in Texas, fo example, must pass at least one of three tests: the “four times test,” the 30-day test, or the serious safety hazard test.
Think you have a lemon, click here to fill out a 30 second form.
A vehicle passes the serious safety hazard test if the vehicle owner submits the vehicle for repair of a serious safety hazard once during the first 12 months of ownership or 12,000 miles, whichever comes first, and then once more during the 12 months or 12,000 miles following the first repair attempts without the problem being fixed.
A vehicle passes the four times test if it’s been taken to a dealership for repairs two times for the same problem or defect within the first year or 12,000 miles, whichever comes first, and twice more during the first 12 months or 12,000 miles following the first repair attempt without the problem being fixed.
A vehicle passes the 30-day test if it has been out of service for repair because of problems covered by the original factory warranty for a total of 30 days or more during the first two years or 24,000 miles of ownership without a comparable loaner vehicle offered, and there were two repair attempts during the first year or 12,000 without any success.
The attorneys of Allen Stewart P.C. have combined decades of taking on automotive manufacturers when they fail to uphold their end of their written warranties. They have a proven track record of fighting big companies on behalf of their clients and getting them the best possible outcomes. If your vehicle’s manufacturer doesn’t hold up their end of the warranty, the lemon law experts at Allen Stewart P.C. make sure you get the justice you deserve. The longer you wait the less likely you are to secure a good outcome, so reach out to Allen Stewart P.C. today.