I don't know if this will help you. I have no way of knowing what Australia's laws are or how similar to U.S. law they may be but here goes:
Lemon laws have now been enacted in all but 2 states. While these lemon laws are not uniform, they do follow a common theme.
1. The statutes define lemon cars and required that manufacturers (not dealers)remedy the defects. Most statutes define "lemon-ness" in terms of a car that continues to have a defect that substantially impairs its use, value, or safety of the car after a reasonable number of attempts to repair the car.
2. Most statutes set up a warranty rights period of either 12 to 24 months or 12,000 to 24 thousand miles. The defects must occur sometime in this period.
3. Most of the statutes contain a three or four prong definition of when a manufacturer has had a sufficient number of attempts to repair, entitling the consumer to a refund or a replacement. These are:
a. If the defect is a serious safety defect involving brakes steering, the manufacturer is granted one attempt to repair.
b. If the defect is a safety defect not involving a serious safety defect, the manufacturer has two attempts to repair.
c. For any other defect, the manufacturers are usually granted three or four chances to repair the same defect.
d. If at any time the vehicle is in the shop for a cumulative total of 30 days in a one year period, at least one of those days occurring in the first 12 months or 12,000 miles.
If any of the four prongs are satisfied, the consumer is generally granted the right to require repurchase or replacement of her vehicle.
4. Most lemon laws allow an offset for use of the vehicle for the consumer. This reasonable offset for use, often involved a reduction in the consumer's purchase price return in relation to the number of miles he has put on the car. One law expresses the reduction in refund for use as follows:
(miles at time of refund x purchase price)/100,000
The consumer can often effectively argue that he should not be charged for miles that were put on the vehicle after the initial attempt to repair the offending defect. For example, what if the consumer allows a dealer to make several attempts to repair a defect over a period of several thousand miles? Should the manufacturer be allowed to reduce his refund for the period of time he was unsuccessful in repairing the defect? Our answer is no and the above formula should be computed using the mileage at the time of the first attempt. This can often make a difference of several hundred dollars to the consumer.
5. Only about one half of the lemon laws allow the consumer to recover attorney's fees in his action. Those states that do allow attorney's fees certainly provide greater access to representation in warranty disputes and greater likelihood of success.
[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 11-30-1999).]
