Refurbished products – smartphones, tablets, computers, etc. – can no longer be presented as “as new” by specialist retailers. The legislator has just put some order in the practices of resellers.
The market for refurbished products is booming. According to a barometer carried out in 2021 (1) by Recommerce, one of the players in this market, 6 out of 10 French people are ready to buy second-hand electronic goods (smartphones, computers, game consoles, etc.) checked and cleaned from professional retailers. The price is, as often, the first argument, cited by two thirds of respondents. These objects, in fact, are expensive and age quickly. Opting for refurbished allows you to benefit from reductions ranging from 15% to 60% of the new price, depending on the age and condition of the product.
As is often the case when a new market emerges, the need to regulate business practices is felt. One in particular: the use by resellers ofexpressions that may imply that the reconditioned object has the same characteristics as if it were new. This was, until recently, the case, for example, of Backmarket, the leader in this market, which used the grade “As new” to describe products with a perfect aesthetic appearance.
This is no longer possible. A decree issued in Official newspaper of February 18, 2022, but whose date of application is set for January 1, 2022, prohibits the use of the expressions “new condition”, “like new” or “as new” for refurbished products. BackMarket has already taken note of this, replacing the expression “As new” with “Perfect condition”.
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Refurbished = safe and functional
The text, taken pursuant to an article of the Consumer Code created by the recent law on the fight against waste and the circular economy, also sets the conditions under which a professional can use the terms “reconditioned” or “reconditioned product”. The object sold as such must meet two conditions:
- have “undergone tests covering all of its functionalities in order to establish that it meets the legal security obligations and for the use that the consumer can legitimately expect”;
- if applicable, having “undergone one or more interventions in order to restore its functionality”. Among these interventions, deletion of all stored data or kept in connection with a previous use or a previous user, before the product or part changed ownership”.
Finally, if the retailer wishes to display the mention “Reconditioned in France”the operations mentioned above must be “completely carried out on national territory”.
(1) Online study carried out from January 11 to 18, 2021, among 1,003 individuals aged 16 to 65, representative of individuals living in France. To guarantee the representativeness of the sample, the weight of the mobile operator has been adjusted based on the framework data available from Kantar.