Goodbye to the repairability index, and make way for the “durability index” for televisions. From this Wednesday, January 8, you will find a new note attached to the prices of TV screens, whether online or in store. Next to the energy label, the sustainability index will allow, via a rating from 1 to 10 and a color code, to quickly gauge access to repairs and spare parts for a product. It replaces and completes the’index of repairability which had been used since 2021, and which applied to nine products (including televisions).
The new index now includes criteria for reparability and above all reliabilityelements on which the consumer can rely to know “ the more or less durable nature, understood in the sense of lifespan, of its purchases of electrical or electronic products » of a product, details the website of the Ministry of the Economy.
The sustainability index is the average of three scores:
- a reparability rating: this involves measuring access to technical documentation, ease of dismantling, availability and price of spare parts (at the time of sale).
- a reliability rating, the objective of which is to measure “resistance to stress and wear” over time – this criterion is new: it was not taken into account in the previous index, the of repairability. Are maintenance and service accessible, is there a commercial guarantee and a quality process?
- a note of improvement – update – of the devices.
Also read: Repair bonus: still too few French people have benefited from it in 2024
Access to spare parts, extended warranty… This is what your new “enhanced right to repair” consists of
Red, orange, yellow or green
The higher the score, the longer a product will last. The durability index takes up the codes of its predecessor, the repairability index, with a color code ranging from red to green: the greener the label, the more durable a product will be considered.
This Wednesday morning, we took a quick look at the online sales sites. While some played the game, others were not yet up to date with the new regulations – they still displayed the old repairability indices.
Also read: Imposed prices, coded language, retaliatory measures… 12 companies including Darty, Boulanger, Seb sentenced to a monster fine
Smartphones excluded from the system, at the request of Brussels
Next to the index, a link to an explanatory note should allow consumers to understand how it was calculated. For the moment, only televisions are affected: washing machines will follow next April. Next will come – the date remains to be defined – vacuum cleaners, electric lawn mowers, dishwashers and high pressure cleaners.
But for the HOP (Stop Planned Obsolescence) association, the list should be extended to many other consumer devices, it declares in a press release published Tuesday January 7.
For smartphones, we will have to wait until June 2025 and the future energy labeling defined by Brussels. Telephones were in fact excluded from the system, at the request of the European Commission, which feared that the French index would come into conflict with the future European index, less restrictive on certain points according to defenders of a right to repair.
???? To not miss any news from 01net, follow us on Google News and WhatsApp.
