We went through the raw data behind France's durability index for Sony, Bosch/Siemens, Haier/Candy, Samsung, LG and Miele. One criterion — commercial warranty and quality process — came back near-zero for every single one. Here's what that means for reading the score.
An index you can actually audit
France's Indice de Durabilité is one of the few consumer indices in the world where the methodology isn't an agency's trade secret or an algorithmic black box. It's law. Decrees from 5 April 2024 (under the AGEC act) prescribe exactly which criteria and sub-criteria are calculated, manufacturers must publish the underlying data on data.gouv.fr, and keep proof of testing on file for DGCCRF audits.
That let us do something you normally can't: pull the raw data straight from manufacturers — not an aggregated marketing summary — and look at what the score actually consists of.
We went through current datasets from six manufacturers (Sony, Bosch/Siemens, Haier/Candy, Samsung, LG, Miele) across TVs and washing machines. The same pattern repeated across all of them.
How the score is built
The index runs 0–10 and splits into two equally-weighted blocks:
- Repairability (50%) — documentation, disassembly, spare-parts availability and price.
- Reliability (50%) — resistance to wear, ease of maintenance, and commercial warranty + quality process.
We tracked that last sub-criterion across all six manufacturers. The result:
| Manufacturer | Product | Warranty/quality process (out of 10) |
|---|---|---|
| Sony | TV K-43S20M2/P | 0.25 |
| Bosch/Siemens | Washing machine WGJ244ABFR | 0.25 |
| Haier/Candy | Washing machine HW110B14979EUGFR | 0.25 |
| Samsung | TV TQ75LS03FWUXXC | 0.25 |
| LG | TV OLED97G54LW.AEU | 0.3 |
| Miele | Washing machine WCA120 | 0.5 |
Six different manufacturers, two product categories, and the score sits in a 0.25–0.5 out of 10 band the whole time. None of them offer an extended warranty or a declared quality process beyond the statutory minimum (2 years in the EU).
We then widened the same view across our full French-index dataset — 271 of 274 records (98.9%) fall in the 0.25–0.5 out of 10 band. There are exactly three exceptions: two Metz Display televisions at 1.0, and a single record that scores full marks on this criterion — the Easypitch SPARK Advance at 10.0 out of 10. One product in 274 shows the criterion can be met; the rest of the market does not try.
Why it matters
This isn't a trivia detail for spreadsheet enthusiasts. It means something concrete for anyone using the durability index to decide what to buy: in practice the warranty criterion does not distinguish between brands. Across 98.9% of records the gap on this axis is negligible — everyone is near the floor. Which is exactly what makes the one exception interesting: it shows the low scores are not a technical inevitability but a commercial choice.
The real differences between products show up elsewhere:
- in resistance to wear (for washing machines, measured as the number of completed wash cycles under the CEN EN 50731 standard, across a 1,400–3,400 cycle range; for TVs, tested on a minimum of 5 units of the same chassis under the manufacturer's own methodology),
- in spare-parts availability — where the spread is genuinely large. Our data review found concrete examples where the same part is available via the manufacturer channel within 3 days for 7 years, but effectively unavailable through a different channel.
In other words: if you're going to use the durability index to decide, pay attention to the sub-scores, not just the headline number. An overall score of 8/10 can hide a product with excellent repairability but average durability under wear — or the reverse.
What we're doing about it
Every record from the French index in our database now carries a full breakdown into individual sub-criteria (repairability and reliability separately), a concrete description of the test methodology for that product category, and — wherever data.gouv.fr publishes it — a real example of spare-parts availability with delivery time and years of coverage. The goal is that one summary number never hides what's underneath it.
The full methodology writeup is on the Methodology page.
Sources
Decree of 5 April 2024 on durability index criteria for TVs and washing machines (Légifrance), schema.data.gouv.fr (etalab/schema-indice-durabilite), economie.gouv.fr, ADEME. Raw data: manufacturer datasets on data.gouv.fr (Sony France, BSH Electroménager, Haier France, Samsung Electronics France, LG Electronics France, Miele S.A.S.), retrieved 2026-07-06.
Further reading
A tenth of France's reliability score measures nothing
We rebuilt the French durability index from the complete register — 2,764 models instead of the 274 we had in July — and separated every sub-criterion. The warranty and quality-process criterion carries a nominal 10% of the reliability score and explains −0.1% of its variance. Delete it entirely and the ranking barely moves.
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