Resorting to second-hand parts is sometimes a good way to repair your car or even to change some of its parts. This process requires time to find the piece: you may be lucky and find it on a buying-selling platform, but if not, you have to go to a scrapyard and search in person: few have an inventory that access comfortably from your home. Citroën wants to change the rules of that game and already offers used parts, which you can buy online with the guarantee of the French brand. This is how Citroën B-Parts works.
A few weeks ago, Citroën launched Citroen B-Parts: a catalog of used components that includes more than five million spare parts. For this they have based themselves on one of the Stellantis subsidiaries: B-Parts, which according to the automobile group is “the European leader in the online distribution of used vehicle parts”.
How does Citroën B-Parts work?
The spare parts are classified into seven families, ranging from the engine to the bodywork, including airbags, electronics and electricity, the interior, lighting or suspension. The target audience is both private drivers and authorized Citroën workshops and is already active in several European countries (Germany, Spain, France, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Austria, Finland, Denmark, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland).
How does it work? Simply enter the model name or license plate to access the parts available for that specific vehicle. The system also allows you to create an alert system so that the user receives a notification when the part they are looking for becomes available again. And they have not only focused on new models, but also on those that are no longer part of the market and even in classics Like the Citroen 2CV.
Citroën B-Parts offers a 12 month warranty in each of the parts sold and if the driver is not satisfied with his purchase, he has a period of fourteen days to return the parts.
Legislation in Spain
Its goal is to help owners fix their vehicles at a low and affordable price. Citroën’s initiative, however, may run into some handicap: in Spain, for example, Royal Decree 1457/1986 that regulates repairs carried out in workshops establishes a series of obligations for these processes: one of them is that All spare parts must be new.
Of course, as a good rule, it has its exceptions. According to Article 9, if the client proves his agreement in writing, the workshop may use reconditioned parts or rebuilt by the vehicle manufacturer, by services authorized by him or by specialized industries expressly authorized by the Ministry of Industry and Energy. The workshop must not only inform the client, it will also assume its suitability and guarantee.
There would be a second possibility: when a series of extraordinary circumstances such as, for example, for a justified reason of urgency, because they are elements of models that have been discontinued and do not appear in the normal stock of spare parts warehouses or for any other reason accepted by the user, as long as they do not affects active elements or assemblies of the vehicle’s braking, suspension and steering systems. In this case, the workshop will have to assume responsibility, in writing, for the good condition of the used spare parts.
