Understanding New Jersey’s New Lemon Law

Nancy breaks down the new lemon law to help you determine if your vehicle is a lemon and how you can possibly turn it into lemonade!

Transcript:

Did you ever purchase a new or used vehicle and swear it was a lemon? Things were constantly going wrong with the vehicle and you didn’t know if there was recourse. Hi, I’m Nancy at Kneble’s Auto Service Center. Do you know in New Jersey, there’s a lemon law for new and used vehicles? The lemon law covers new vehicles, motorcycles, motor homes for two years or up to 24,000 miles, whichever comes first. The new vehicle must be purchased, leased, or registered in New Jersey to qualify for the New Jersey lemon law. The defect your vehicle is having must decrease the value, substantially affect the use of the vehicle or worse, be serious enough to cause bodily injury or death if driven to begin to qualify for the lemon law.

Now, with that being said, you have steps to take before claiming lemon law. First, the manufacturer gets a second opportunity to repair the defect. If you are still having a problem, then you need to send a certified letter with return receipt to the manufacturer that the problem is still ongoing. Now, if the problem is a serious safety problem, then you only have to do one failed attempt repair before sending that certified letter with return receipt to the manufacturer and they get one final attempt to repair the vehicle within that 10 days from receiving that certify lever. If the problem still exists at this point, now you can submit a claim to the state of New Jersey for lemon law.

Now, the lemon law, like I said, does cover used vehicles, but that use vehicle must be purchased from a licensed dealer, be seven years old or newer, cost $3,000 or more, and the miles on the vehicle are not to exceed 100,000 miles when you purchased this. And the specific problem in question must be covered under the warranty. Repairs under this warranty must be repaired within the warrantied timeframe. The warranty is provided by the used car dealer. The lemon law in New Jersey for used vehicles do not cover these vehicles, vehicles bought out of their lease, commercial vehicles, private sales, flood damage vehicles, and vehicles still under the manufacture’s warranty, misused vehicles, abused vehicles, vehicles in collision neglected vehicles, recall vehicles. They all are not covered in the lemon law. So know your facts before claiming the lemon law. Thank you for watching and check out a new video every Wednesday at 12:30. Thank you.