According to the DGCCRF, most sellers of reconditioned mobile devices do not respect the control and repair rules. Be wary, therefore, if you want to buy a second-hand smartphone!
With inflation and the resulting drop in purchasing power, but also the climate crisis which requires us to limit our consumption, reconditioned goods are on the rise! In fact, reconditioning an electronic product that has already been used allows you to give it a second life and, above all, to benefit from it without paying a high price for it. According to the Recommerce barometer, in France, 20% of smartphones used in 2024 – or 1 in 5 – are second-hand, compared to 7% of mobiles used in 2018. This means that
However, the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and the Repression of second-hand smartphones and tablets are attracting more and more consumers! frauds (DGCCRF) carried out a survey in 2022 among 131 establishments in the sector – online commerce sites, brands specializing in second-hand goods or telephony, and mass distribution – which reveals practices that are, to say the least, dubious. Because, in reality, most of them do not respect the rules in force, to the detriment of consumers.
Firstly, some brands ignore checks, even though the law requires exhaustive tests to guarantee the safety and proper functioning of devices. Most of the time, they are satisfied with a superficial visual examination. And, in cases where it is necessary to replace an essential part of the device, such as the screen or the battery, again in-depth tests are not carried out. In short, there is real deception regarding the quality of the merchandise purchased by the customer. And that’s without taking into account the lack of traceability of these parts between the reconditioner and the distributor.
Another major problem: information that lends itself to the conclusion. It is essential to pay careful attention to the words used by the merchant. “new condition”, “refurbished”, “grade A or AB”, “very good condition”, “100% functional”… So many qualifiers which vary from one seller to another, making it impossible to actually know the status of the device. Likewise, if the latter speaks of “certified” products, which suggests that an independent organization has validated their quality. In truth, this term is often used to designate internal control processes that do not correspond to the requirements of the legal certification framework. Here again, this is a semantic manipulation…
For the moment, the DGCCRF has chosen the path of education, often through warnings (misleading use of the term certified or new, guarantees of conformity not indicated or reduced, absence of display of the essential characteristics of the product, etc.) , to remind bad students of the regulations. Around twenty compliance injunctions have already been issued for the most serious cases. The checks will subsequently continue with, perhaps, sanctions.