Rick, you screwed this one up.

What you should have done is gone to the dealer, bought the clockspring,
then pulled the old one out and returned it, complaining it was broken out
of the box.  Since there was only 20K on it, the clockspring that broke
was obviously the exact same design, identical manufacture markings, etc.
there would have been no way for them to tell it apart.

You would have got an extra clockspring but so what.

Normally I would never advise this kind of behavior since it's underhanded.
But in this case, there is no moral leg a manufacturer can possibly stand on
to claim that 25K miles is normal lifespan of a clockspring in normal
driving.

The dealer parts people do not give a sh.t why a part fails.  From their
point of view that is a factory problem.  But the factories of course try to
throw procedural problems up with dealerships trying to return defective
parts out of the box.  Mostly to prevent people from taking a part that has
failed in normal usage - say 100K miles on it - and trying to skank a free
part out of the factory.  The dealer parts people cannot return manufacturer
defect parts to the factory unless all the paperwork is present.  And all
the factory does when they get a defect part is send it back to the
subassembler that made the part to begin with and make them eat the cost.
Which is for in your case is as it should be.  If the factory vendor
doesen't
want to lose money on manufacturer defect returns then they can start
analyzing the returns that come back to them to see why they are failing
then change their manufacturing processes to correct the problem.

This is one of the areas where the aftermarket is way, way ahead of dealer
parts departments.  For example just this last weekend I had a wheel
bearing fail.  From the local Shucks/Checkers the bearing was $17 with
a 2 year warranty.  (SKF bearing)  No way in hell would I buy the same
bearing from a dealer parts department even though the bearing I would
get from them would most likely be exactly the same manufacturer.  Can
you imagine trying to get a warranty return on a 2 year old bearing at
a dealer parts counter?  Of course, naturally, a bearing warranty is
pretty safe since when wheel bearings fail they most often self destruct and
weld themselves to the axle spindle and you have to cut them off, thus
you won't be able to return them for credit.  But, the point is that if
SKF uses bad steel in a bearing that fails 20 months down the road,
they are most likely going to get the failed part back through warranty.
By contrast Chrysler isn't going to be seeing these parts nor their vendors.

Ted