Impartial Services Group
Perhaps I can help…I just Lemon Law’d our 2018 Honda CR-V in the State of Florida.
- Document everything.
- Follow your states law to the letter
- Once Honda heard the word ‘buy back’ they jumped through hoops. It didn’t keep the dealer from lying…
- I dealt with Honda’s ‘in house’ arbitrator. My case was rock solid, there wasn’t much they could do.
- If all your paper works in order the lemon law will owrk in your favor.
- Floridas law is ‘3 attempts to fix or 15 days out of service’ Luckily for us we had 4 attempts and 15 days…
My interpretation of Colorado’s law is that it sucks. 4 attempts doesn’t apply because a year has passed. And it’s 30 business days out of service which is 6 weeks or more depending on holidays.
Perhaps FCA has a higher number of buy backs because they’d rather not deal with intermediaries and go straight to the state level?
In the end Honda offered us a few options to avoid the buy back. We declined and sold it back Overall compensation was fair, we received our down payment plus all monthly payments minus a ‘use’ fee.
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“you do so on a contingency fee basis. This means that unless we win, there are no fees or costs. The fees and costs are paid by the manufacturer and/or dealer. There are never any out of pocket expenses to the consumer”
Where is that from/what is the citation? I know how contingency fees work but am very unsure if they really make sense here? Is there an attorneys cost provision? OP says lemon law doesn’t apply any more and this is just a warranty claim. Seems like this is just arbitration?
If not and lawyer takes it on contingency, then when you win the case and car is bought back you would have to give the lawyer 5k+ of your winnings.
Just helped my friend with an Audi A5 lemon law in California.
The car spend many weeks at the dealership with electrical issues that would sometimes cause the car to loose power.
First they were not willing to negotiate they put him in a random Audi loaner for a few months. after the 4th incident is when we brought up lemon law and they offered him 2 months of payments covered.
We took the free two months (hard to complain when they had him in a brand new A7 with a way higher MSRP than the A5 and all the new tech) compared to being thrown in a minivan.
Fast forward to the next incident when the car lost power on the freeway, we had the car towed to the dealership and we had prepared the most basic lemon law Loi letter. you can just google a basic one and fill it out with your information.
They gave us 2 offers, to either put him in a brand new A5 same package / color combo and keep the current lease going.
Or to get all the money back including down payment.
We decided to get all the money back he had the lease for about 9 months out of 36. Best of luck, hopefully they lemon law it for you.
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Manufacturer pays for reasonable attorney fees, the time it took for attorney to work on case.
“The Colorado Lemon Law also has deadlines in which a legal claim must be filed which is within six (6) months of the expiration of the vehicle warranty or one (1) year from the date on which the purchaser received the car”
Consultations are free and it woudnt hurt him to ask a lemon law lawyer. Not sure why he is being stubborn, the worse they can tell him is they can’t lemon law it.
That’s not the full quote.
From the AG’s website “Under the law, a “reasonable number of attempts” to repair a defect applies when the same defect remains after it has been subject to repair four (4) or more times within the first year after the date of original delivery. It also applies when the vehicle is out of service for repairs for a cumulative total of thirty (30) or more business days during the warranty term or one year after original delivery, whichever comes first”
Sure ask an attorney but the law is pretty clear, it’s one year from entry into service. I agree you want the lemon law to govern this claims but based on OPs fact pattern it seems that will not be possible.
I can’t speak to what happens in Colorado, but we went through a lemon law attorney for my wife’s car. The attorney payment was completely separate and transparent to us. We got a check for the agreed settlement amount in the end and he got money from the manufacturer.
When we signed all the paperwork with him to get things started, the only way we were obligated to pay him any money was if during the processes, we stopped cooperating with him. Basically if there was a case and he wasn’t able to pursue it because we wouldn’t given him the documentation we had or anything like that, then he could come to us for money for work performed.
FCA gave us a free month when this happened to our Jeep. No questions asked, just call FCA and complain.
The Colorado lemon law has an attorneys cost provision as well where the manufacturer pays attorneys fees if you win. The issue is the lemon law doesn’t apply here since the car has been in service more than a year. The Crux of the issue is whether the lemon law applies, not whether it includes an attorneys cost provision.
Maybe I don’t understnad something, but isn’t it also “during the warranty term”?
I guess if it didn’t go to service during the warranty term?
That’s what I’m confused with is the under warranty term part
If you took possession of the car brand new, and it’s older than 1 year at this point, the bolded statement is the showstopper.
IANAL, and I don’t know if there is any wiggle room in the law or not, but the way it reads to me, you’re SOL on lemon law in the state of CO if the car has already had a birthday from the day of purchase, regardless of warranty, as the 1 year mark “came first.”
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What happens with a year old loaner that has been in service for 9 months and is sold as “new”?
I would assume it is the in-service date of the sales transaction, not when they punched it. But again, IANAL, and law doesn’t necessarily follow logic all the time.
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Why would it be linked to the sales date while in the quote it is linked with the warranty? What is “original delivery”? I guess the point is that it is 1 one year from the moment the warranty started.
I’d assume, because, in theory, one could be out of warranty in year 1 if they drive 36k or more a year.
One would only have 3 months to file for lemon on a loaner that was punched 9 months before purchase, according to that 1 year requirement.
It’s an ambiguous statement that would need interpretation by someone in a robe with much more education than myself 
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It probably depends on whether the loaner was registered as sold with the State.