BUYER’S GUIDE · 03

Who answers for the warranty
when you were the importer

The Brazilian Consumer Defence Code assigns liability along the supply chain, and the chain starts at the importer. The question is what is left of it when the importer was the buyer.

How the Code assigns liability

The Brazilian Consumer Defence Code does not ask who is at fault. It builds a chain and holds whoever stands in it:

• Article 12 — harm caused by the product. The manufacturer, the producer, the builder and the importer are liable, regardless of fault, for damage caused by a defect.
• Article 18 — quality defects. Suppliers are jointly liable and have 30 days to cure the defect. After that the consumer chooses between replacement, a refund or a price reduction.
• Article 13 — the retailer. Liable when the manufacturer or the importer cannot be identified.

Note that the word importer appears in the first two. That is not an accident: the importer is who places the foreign product on the Brazilian market, and so answers as a manufacturer would.

What happens when the importer is you

That machinery assumes there is an importer in Brazil. When the import declaration is filed under the buyer’s CPF, the importer is the buyer. The manufacturer is outside the country. What is left in the chain, formally, is whoever provided the service — and services fall under article 20, which covers defective service, not defective goods.

It is worth saying what is also true, and it favours the buyer: Brazilian courts often pull the intermediary into the chain of supply, and there are decisions both ways. So the honest answer is not “you have no claim”. It is that you may have one, after arguing for it — and the argument is the cost, along with the time the watch spends sitting still.

The deadlines, which are short

Under article 26, the right to complain of an apparent defect lapses in 90 days for a durable product, counted from actual delivery. For a hidden defect — the typical case with a mechanical movement — the period starts when the defect becomes evident, not at purchase.

Under article 50, the brand’s warranty is complementary to the statutory one: it does not replace it, does not shorten it, and the instrument must be handed over duly filled in. A blank card is not a lost formality — it usually means the watch never passed through an authorised dealer.

Spare parts, where it hurts most

Article 32 requires manufacturers and importers to secure the supply of components and spare parts while the product is still being made or imported, and for a reasonable period afterwards. With a mechanical watch this matters more than in almost any other category: the missing part may be a crown tube, a sapphire crystal cut to its own dimensions, or a whole module the brand only sells to accredited service.

If you were the importer, that duty has no one to be addressed to in Brazil. A repair tends to become a shipment abroad — the part crossing customs twice, taxed on the way back, with no deadline anyone has undertaken to meet.

What to do before you pay

All of this is settled by one question asked before the purchase, and the answer in writing binds the supplier under articles 30 and 35. The questions are in How to tell whether the seller is really the importer.

Why we are the ones writing this

Coroa is being incorporated to act as the importer of record for independent brands in Brazil — customs clearance in its own name, a goods invoice issued to the buyer, and after-sales service in the country. We have a direct interest in this subject and it would be dishonest not to say so. It is also true that we have not imported anything yet: no stock, no catalogue, nothing to sell today.

Buyer’s guide · How to tell whether the seller is really the importer · Is there an annual limit on importing under a CPF? · Back to the start