In 2022 the DGCCRF inspected 523 French manufacturers and retailers on the repairability index. It found 341 of them, 65 percent, in breach. The most common failure was not a missing pictogram on a shelf edge. It was being unable to hand over the calculation behind the score.
That is the part aftersales and compliance leads should read twice. A repairability score is not a marketing asset that gets designed once and forgotten. It is a public statement about spare parts availability, spare parts pricing and repair documentation, and a French regulator can ask for the working out.
Marketing owns the pictogram. Aftersales owns whether it is true.
What the index scores, in one box
The French repairability index (indice de reparabilite) is a score out of 10 that must be displayed next to the price of certain electrical and electronic products sold in France. It was created by the AGEC anti-waste law of 10 February 2020 and set out in Decree 2020-1757 of 29 December 2020. It has applied since 1 January 2021. The score is calculated by the manufacturer using a published ministerial method, and the retailer is responsible for showing it, in store and online.
The score combines five criteria families. Under the published method each family carries equal weight, twenty points out of a hundred, then divided by ten to give the mark out of 10.
| Criterion | What it measures | Who actually controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | How long repair and maintenance information stays available to repairers and owners | Aftersales |
| Disassembly | Steps, tools and fastener types needed to reach priority parts | Product design |
| Spare parts availability | How many years the listed parts remain orderable, and how fast they ship | Aftersales and supply chain |
| Spare parts price | Part price as a ratio of the new product price | Aftersales and pricing |
| Category-specific | Varies by product, for example remote diagnostics, software update commitments, meter resets | Mixed |
Three of the five criteria live in aftersales, not in R&D
Read the right-hand column and the problem becomes obvious. Only one criterion is settled at the design stage. Three of them are settled by decisions made after launch, by teams who were not in the room when the score was first calculated.
Documentation is a retention commitment. Availability is a stocking and lead time commitment. Price is a pricing policy that gets revisited every year by someone whose targets have nothing to do with an index.
Which means the score is not a fixed property of the product. It is a property of how the brand runs its aftersales, measured on the day the score was filed. A score is a claim, and claims age.
What the index covers, and what moved to the durability index in 2025
The index started with five categories on 1 January 2021: smartphones, laptops, televisions, front-loading washing machines and electric lawnmowers, including cordless and robotic models. In November 2022 it was extended to dishwashers, high-pressure cleaners, top-loading washing machines and vacuum cleaners.
Then France started replacing it. Decree 2024-316 of 5 April 2024 introduced the durability index (indice de durabilite), which took over from the repairability index for televisions on 8 January 2025 and for washing machines on 8 April 2025.
The durability index keeps the repairability criteria and adds reliability, meaning resistance to wear and stress, plus factors like the commercial guarantee offered. It is scored the same way, out of 10, displayed the same way, next to the price.
For a brand selling across categories, that means running two indices at once. A vacuum cleaner and a washing machine in the same catalogue now sit under different regimes. The reporting burden did not get simpler in 2025. It got split.
The EU layer is moving in parallel, through the Right to Repair Directive, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and the repairability class on the EU energy label for smartphones and tablets. That wider picture is covered in the EU right to repair rules for ecommerce brands, and it is a separate compliance track from the French index, not a replacement for it.
Manufacturers grade themselves, and the checks are getting sharper
There is no independent lab issuing the number. The manufacturer calculates the score using the ministerial method and holds the supporting technical documentation. Self-declaration is efficient. It is also the reason the DGCCRF keeps auditing it.
The 2022 sweep covered 523 establishments across five product categories. The DGCCRF found 341 of them non-compliant, issuing 256 warnings and 89 injunctions. The 2023 sweep covered 485 establishments and more than 9,700 device models, with a 64 percent problem rate.
In 2025 the DGCCRF added a reporting channel aimed at professionals, specifically repairers and distributors, so that people who handle the products daily can flag scores that do not match reality. The stated triggers include missing technical documentation, repairs that turn out to need special tools, and parts that are unavailable, slow or priced oddly.
That channel changes the risk profile. The people best placed to notice an inflated score are independent repairers, and they now have a form.
The document most brands cannot produce on request
The single most common anomaly in both sweeps was not the missing pictogram. It was the failure to make the calculation parameters available, which accounted for 73 percent of anomalies in physical stores and 52 percent online.
The rule is simple. A seller has to show the score, and has to be able to give the consumer the parameters used to build it. In practice that means the criteria breakdown, per product reference, kept current.
Most brands treat this as a PDF that lives on a shared drive and gets updated when someone remembers. It goes stale within two product cycles. Nobody audits a spare parts catalogue until somebody asks for the spreadsheet.
Black Diamond automated its warranty claim and repair workflows on Claimlane, which puts every part request, repair outcome and turnaround time in one queryable record rather than in a repair inbox. That record is what a parameters request actually needs.
Spare parts price is the criterion that drifts
Availability tends to get attention because it is binary. Either the part is orderable or it is not. Price is the one that quietly moves.
The criterion is a ratio, part price against the price of the new product. Both sides of that ratio change. Product prices get discounted, promoted and cleared. Part prices get adjusted for freight, for minimum order quantities, for a supplier renegotiation nobody flagged to compliance.
A score filed at launch on a 20 percent ratio can be sitting at 35 percent two years later without a single person deciding to make the product less repairable. It happened through eleven small pricing decisions.
The index does not care that the part exists in a warehouse in Poland. It cares what a French repairer can get, at what price, in what timeframe.
Where the score breaks: the systems view
Spare parts data usually lives in the ERP. NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics or Business Central hold the part numbers, the stock, the lead times and the list prices. Product and pricing data for the storefront sits in Shopify or the commerce platform. The customer conversation sits in Zendesk or Gorgias. The repairability documentation sits in a folder.
None of those four systems knows what the others say about the same part. That is the failure mode. The score is assembled once, by hand, from four sources that then move independently.
Connecting claims and repairs to the ERP closes the loop, because every claim that consumes a part writes back the thing the index is actually asking about: was the part available, how long did it take, what did it cost against the product. Claimlane runs 75+ integrations for exactly this reason, so that the aftersales record and the ERP record describe the same event.
What a defensible score costs to maintain
The pictogram takes an afternoon. The evidence behind it takes a quarter.
The cost sits in claim handling, because that is where parts, documentation and turnaround times are proven or exposed. Davidsen went from five agents handling claims to one or two after moving onto Claimlane. On a fully loaded support cost of around EUR 45,000 per agent, releasing three heads is roughly EUR 135,000 a year, and the same work now produces the parts and repair data the index needs as a by-product.
That is the argument worth taking to finance. Compliance reporting built on top of a manual claims process is a new cost line. Compliance reporting that falls out of an automated one is close to free.
Claimlane holds a 4.8 out of 5 rating on G2 across warranty and returns management.
Where Claimlane sits against Loop, Narvar, AfterShip and ReverseLogix
The French index is not a returns problem, and that distinction decides which tool is relevant.
Loop, Narvar and AfterShip are strong on the returns and post-purchase layer for direct-to-consumer brands: return initiation, exchanges, labels, tracking and the shopper-facing experience around a parcel going backwards. None of them is built to hold a repair case with a part number, a supplier claim and a warranty rule attached.
ReverseLogix works further down the chain, on reverse logistics operations and returns processing at facility level. It is built for the warehouse rather than for the warranty policy.
Claimlane sits on the warranty, repair and spare parts layer, for B2C and B2B claims in the same system. Warranty registration, claim intake with photos and serial numbers, repair routing, part consumption, supplier recovery and the analytics on top of it. For a brand that needs to prove a repairability score, that is where the evidence lives.
A pre-audit checklist
Four questions worth answering before a regulator, a repairer or a French retail partner asks them.
- Can the current calculation parameters be produced for any covered reference within one working day, without a manual rebuild?
- Does the spare parts price ratio still match what was filed, for every covered product, at today's prices?
- Is documentation availability measured against the commitment in the score, or against the last time anyone checked the portal?
- For televisions and washing machines, has the switch to the durability index been reflected in the display and in the underlying file?
Brands that can answer all four are not doing anything clever. They just connected claims, parts and the ERP so the answers exist without a project.
Frequently asked questions
Is the French repairability index mandatory for online sellers?
Yes. Distance sellers have to show the index inside the product presentation, close to the price, and must be able to give the consumer the parameters used to calculate it. The obligation applies to the seller, including marketplaces and non-French sellers shipping into France.
Who calculates the repairability score?
The manufacturer or the party placing the product on the French market calculates it, using the method set out by ministerial order, and keeps the supporting technical documentation. It is a self-declared score, checked after the fact by the DGCCRF.
Which products need a repairability index in 2026?
Smartphones, laptops, electric lawnmowers, dishwashers, high-pressure cleaners and vacuum cleaners remain under the repairability index. Televisions moved to the durability index in January 2025 and washing machines followed in April 2025.
What is the difference between the repairability index and the durability index?
The durability index keeps the repairability criteria and adds reliability, meaning resistance to wear and stress, along with factors such as the commercial guarantee. Both are scored out of 10 and displayed next to the price. The durability index is replacing the repairability index category by category.
What happens if a repairability score is wrong?
The DGCCRF issues warnings and injunctions, and can escalate. In the 2022 campaign it issued 256 warnings and 89 injunctions across 341 non-compliant establishments. Since 2025 repairers and distributors can also report suspected inaccurate scores directly.
Does the French index apply to B2B sales?
The display obligation is aimed at consumer sales. Brands selling through French retail partners still carry the practical burden, because the retailer needs the score and the calculation parameters from the manufacturer in order to comply.
Build the return and warranty portal customers actually use
Davidsen went from five agents on claims to one or two on Claimlane. The same move gives a French compliance team the parts, repair and turnaround data the repairability index asks about, without a separate reporting project.
