The Lemon Law can Help you (as Funny as the Name Sounds)
With technology and manufacturing techniques as evolved as they are, are there any lemons out there still? There is a statistic for it – one out of 100 cars (new cars) driven out of the dealerships turns out to be a lemon. That’s nearly 200,000 cars annually. What precisely is a lemon, you ask? It is a car that has problems that just can’t be fixed without expenses incurred that would make it unworthy. Every state has a lemon law to protect car buyers in these situations – where they’re stuck with a car that just won’t be repaired, and the manufacturer doesn’t seem eager about taking it back. A lemon law gives you the right to claim a refund or a replacement.
So what is it mean to say that you are protected by the lemon law?
According to most lemon law, a car that’s been driven less than 24,000 miles or one that is less than two years old is considered new enough to be covered. Of course, an accurate definition of what constitutes a new car differs slightly from state to state. However, most laws use figures that are close to these. For you to claim that you have been sold a lemon, you need to have a car that has a substantial problem, one that you have unsuccessfully tried to have fixed numerous times at the dealership. And of course, it shouldn’t be a trouble that popped out of abuse or poor maintenance practices (unless it was the dealer who was responsible for the poor maintenance practices).
What exactly is a substantial problem refers to lemon law though? It could be anything from paint that won’t stop the car from rusting to anything mechanical such as a door not closing properly. If for the problem in question, your car has spent a month out of the past year in a repair shop, if there is a serious defect that compromises the safety of your car that could not be fixed after the first repair attempt, or if there is some other kind of less – serious defect that couldn’t be set right after three attempts, you can consider yourself the proud owner of a lemon.
So let’s say that you encounter yourself stuck with a vehicle that seems to answer to all these. What precisely do you do to claim protection under the lemon law? The first thing you need to do is to call your manufacturer, and explain the situation. They might ask you to send over or fax over all the documentation you have to do with what you have tried, until now, at the authorized repair center. If they do the decent thing and provide you a refund or replacement, all’s well. What if they only offer to refund you half the price of the car and not all of it? You could sue the manufacturer, of course. It could turn into a long drawn-out process then. You will be asked to attend the arbitration.
Arbitration is a safe choice as long as you don’t choose the manufacturer’s own arbitrator. As long as you choose a court-appointed one, you should be in good hands. To make sure that everything goes well in the process further your lemon law case, you need to come prepared with every scrap of documentation you have for what you’ve tried, to fix the defect. The more documentation you have, the safer your bet.
