These famous brands have been offering unlimited repair services for electronic devices and household appliances for some time. But these subscription contracts are subject to very specific conditions.
For several years now, the Boulanger and Darty brands have offered you the opportunity to subscribe to commercial guarantees to repair your devices “free of charge” if they break down after the legal guarantee of conformity – which is two years. Called Darty Max and Boulanger Infinity, these optional protections cover your household appliances and electronic goods, as long as the monthly subscription is paid. To put it simply, by paying a subscription of between ten and twenty euros per month, depending on the number of object categories chosen (household appliances, image and sound, multimedia, photography, etc.), you can benefit from repairs at will. A very tempting offer, but which can turn out to be very disappointing.
Indeed, as revealed by a recent survey of 60 million consumers, itCommercial warranties are generally full of conditions, exclusions and additional fees.. Not to mention that these subscriptions come with a one-year commitment period and it is not possible to withdraw within fourteen days, as the law provides. Once you have signed – often in store, on the advice of a salesperson who prevents you from reading the forty pages of the contract – you are stuck!
Several Darty Max customers had the unpleasant surprise of discovering that the guarantee did not cover equipment that broke down before subscribing – even if some advisors would not hesitate to assure them the opposite when subscribing. In addition, the service charges 49 euros for the first operation carried out on a product purchased outside of Fnac and Darty stores!
For its part, Boulanger Infinity, which nevertheless presents itself as “unlimited repair” on its site, charges 39 or 79 euros for its home interventions, in addition to the subscription price if the device is purchased outside Boulanger after the membership. A way to encourage subscribers to buy exclusively from the brand. Not to mention that Boulanger imposes a waiting period of 30 days after subscription, during which you do not have the right to have a product purchased from another brand repaired.
Moral: you should always read the asterisks carefully! Not to mention that, according to a study on household appliances published by the INC in September 2023, barely 12% of products less than ten years old experienced a breakdown. And that, according to their specifications, most current products are designed to last five years. Statistically, warranty extensions, billed at full price, are therefore not interesting. The legal guarantee is amply sufficient!