San Marcos Lemon Law

All Texas Lemon Law complaints, including those from Hays County and San Marcos, are filed centrally with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Enforcement Division in Austin through the Motor Vehicle Dealer Online Complaint System. The $35 filing fee is refundable if you prevail. Because TxDMV is headquartered in Austin only 30 miles north on I-35, San Marcos residents are unusually close to the agency — though most hearings are still conducted by remote conference. Final orders may be appealed to a Texas district court under the Administrative Procedure Act, generally in Travis County.

Flood damage from a named storm or extraordinary weather event is generally excluded from manufacturer warranties and from Lemon Law coverage, because the defect must arise from a manufacturing problem rather than external damage. However, if your vehicle had a documented defect before the flood, or if a problem manifests that is unrelated to water exposure (for example, a transmission failure or paint delamination), the Lemon Law still applies. Insurance, not the Lemon Law, is the right remedy for flood loss itself. Keep dealer records carefully separated between pre-flood and post-flood complaints if you intend to pursue a TxDMV claim.

Six months from the earliest of warranty expiration, 24 months from delivery, or 24,000 miles. The deadline in Tex. Occ. Code § 2301.606 is strict and TxDMV has no authority to extend it. I-35 commuters between Austin and San Antonio often hit the 24,000-mile trigger before two years, so the clock can start earlier than expected. Send written notice to the manufacturer after the second or third unsuccessful repair attempt and file with TxDMV well before the deadline. Federal Magnuson-Moss (four years) and Texas DTPA (two years) claims have longer windows but must be filed in court.

Yes, if you purchased or leased the vehicle in Texas from a licensed Texas dealer and it is still under the manufacturer's original written warranty. Residency is not a requirement of the Texas Lemon Law — the vehicle has to have been bought or leased in Texas, and you must meet the same four-repair-attempt, two-attempt-serious-safety-hazard, or 30-day out-of-service tests. If you bought the vehicle out of state, even from another state's dealer of the same brand, you generally cannot use TxDMV and would need to look at the lemon law of the purchase state or federal Magnuson-Moss in court.

Hail damage itself is an insurance claim, not a Lemon Law claim. But if a storm exposes an underlying defect — for example, water intrusion through weatherstrip seals that other identical vehicles do not have, or paint delamination caused by defective primer rather than the hail strike — those are warranty defects that can support a TxDMV complaint. Keep insurance documentation separate from your warranty repair history, and ask the dealer to document defects unrelated to the storm when evaluating post-hail repairs. The standard Lemon Law tests still apply regardless of the storm context.

Yes. You can use any franchised dealer authorized to perform warranty work on your brand. The Texas Lemon Law counts repair attempts at any of them toward the statutory tests under § 2301.604. Many San Marcos owners rotate among San Marcos, New Braunfels, Buda, Kyle, and south Austin dealerships, and all those repair orders count. The key requirement is that you give the manufacturer a reasonable number of attempts on the same recurring defect, and that you send the statutorily required written final-chance notice to the manufacturer — not just the dealer — before filing your TxDMV complaint.