Barely two months after buying their new Ford Edge, Rebecca and Josh McDonald made the first trip back to the dealer with electrical problems. And thus began a two-year odyssey.
?It was horrible,? said Rebecca. ?There were different problems every time: the air conditioning, the radio, the backup camera. We had to go back several times, and when I say several, it must?ve been 10.?
The McDonalds tried having the Edge serviced at different dealerships, and made numerous calls to Ford for help. But the carmaker refused to take the car back, even though they couldn?t fix it. In the end, the McDonalds hired an attorney and pursued a case under California lemon law. It took a while, but they eventually received a settlement and a replacement vehicle. ?Luckily for us, the system worked,? said Rebecca. ?But it was a long and tedious process.?
Lemon laws go back to 1975, when Congress passed legislation aimed at making product warranties more consumer-friendly and enforceable, in response to numerous complaints from the public about loopholes and disclaimers buried deep in their contracts that only were explained when they went to make a claim.
The resulting Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act was the first lemon law, and remains the federal law. States then followed suit with lemon laws of their own, which added provisions requiring a manufacturer to provide a refund or replacement if a vehicle with a substantial defect cannot be repaired after a certain number of tries. Specifics vary by ...