Lemon Law - The Qualifications Needed To Use This Very Important Law
When the California lemon law passed in that state, it was a huge coup for consumers. Formerly known as the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act, it is a law that basically was designed to protect consumers who leased or purchased warranted all vehicles including recreation vehicles. According to this law, it the consumer who did buy or leased this car, is found to be a lemon, then the manufacturer/dealership must either replace the vehicle with one of the same or give the consumer their total money back.
There are many guidelines that need to be met in order for the vehicle to qualify as a “lemon” which are: the vehicle can only be used for personal or family reasons. If it is used for business, it won’t qualify because the lemon law does not cover business vehicles.
The lemon vehicle’s problems have to be covered under the warranty. If it is outside of what the warranty states, then the california lemon law does not apply. Also, the respective vehicle must be able to be repaired under usual conditions. The law states that there must be a ‘reasonable number of repair attempts’ which of course can vary from vehicle to vehicle. But a reasonable number has to be a fair number of times to try and eliminate the problem. Then again, if the problem is life threatening or could cause serious injury to the driver and passengers of the vehicle then one time trying to repair the vehicle could constitute as a ‘reasonable number of attempts.’
What is extremely important is that there are many days that the vehicle has not been able to be used where it was in the repair shop. The more days that the vehicle is out of use by the owner, the more this will qualify as a ‘lemon’.
Most people seem to think that a misconception is true; that this lemon law only applies to vehicles that are 18 months or less old or have less than 18,000 miles. Although a huge amount believe this, it just is not correct. This lemon law in California allows vehicles to qualify no matter how old the vehicle is or how many miles it has on it, as long as it is still having problems that are covered by the warranty.
With this lemon law, if the warranty has expired, you still might be able to have a claim. How that works is; if the vehicle is still dealing with problems that were attempted to repair during the warranty period but never were fully taken care of, then you still might be able to qualify for the California Lemon Law.
The vehicle must be tolerating an issue that is covered by a warranty but you do not get to use your vehicle all the time to qualify for this lemon law. The defect or repair issue cannot be trivial but has to be something that really stops you from using your vehicle the way it was intended.