Denied warranty claims sorted into recoverable and final

The situation

Three franchised stores on one DMS had $214,000 of denied, short-paid and charged-back warranty claims in the last 12 months. The stores resubmitted some by hand and had never filed for retail rate.

What was uploaded

• Warranty claim register with denial and chargeback codes for 12 months (DMS export)
• Customer-pay repair orders for the retail-rate calculation
• Manufacturer policy manual sections the stores already used

What the engine found

• Recoverable documentation and op-code denials

  $76,800

  Denials for missing technician stories, wrong op-codes and labour-time variances that could be resubmitted with evidence.

  Rule: recoverable_docs

• Chargebacks still inside the review window

  $11,600

  Chargebacks that could still be disputed, with the evidence each needed.

  Rule: chargeback_review

• Retail labour rate uplift

  $50,400

  About 3,600 warranty labour hours a year paid $14 an hour below the retail rate computed from customer-pay repair orders.

  Rule: retail_rate

The numbers

Found

$138,800

Expected

$90,200

Recovered within 6 months

$64,900

The retail-rate uplift is yearly. Recovered includes $52,300 of resubmitted claims paid and three months of uplift after approval ($12,600).

What it would cost, three ways

Over the same 6 months, in USD.

Time spent

About 20 hours over six months, mostly gathering repair-order photos and technician stories for resubmissions.

The lesson

Separating final denials from recoverable ones first stopped the stores wasting time on claims that could never be paid, and the retail-rate filing became the largest recurring gain.