Back Market: how to handle IMEI numbers

About this article

This article describes the Back Market requirement for the international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number, and how to handle it on ChannelEngine.

Table of contents

Introduction

ChannelEngine API

Adobe Commerce (née Magento)

Shopify

Introduction

Back Market introduced a requirement, effective 1 January 2022, regarding the obligation to provide the IMEI number when selling smartphones on its platform. Failing to do so could result in penalties. For more information on those penalties, please contact Back Market's Partner Support.

To address that requirement, the Process shipments without IMEI number setting has been added to the Setup section of the Back Market channel on ChannelEngine. By default, that setting is enabled. However, if it is disabled and you fail to provide an IMEI when selling smartphones, the shipment is not exported by ChannelEngine.

ChannelEngine supports three ways to handle the addition of IMEIs to smartphones sold on Back Market:

• Via the ChannelEngine API
• Via Adobe Commerce
• Via Shopify

The following Back Market limitations apply, regardless of the platform you use:

• It is only possible to add IMEIs to order lines where the quantity is equal to 1 (one). E.g.: if you sell one Samsung Galaxy S21 and one iPhone 13, each of those items falls within their own order line and the respective IMEIs can be added. If you sell two iPhone 13s, both fall within the same order line – and adding the IMEIs is not possible.
• This flow is only supported when the product is correctly assigned to the Smartphones category within Back Market. If not, adding the IMEIs is not possible.

ChannelEngine API

You must provide an IMEI number in the order line item, within the ExtraData field in the shipment response model, when creating the shipment. The key and value should be structured as
{ Name: "imei", Value: imei_number }
and the maximum number of characters allowed for the IMEI is 15.

E.g.:

{   "MerchantShipmentNo": "SHIP123",   "MerchantOrderNo": "ORDER123",   "Lines": [     {       "MerchantProductNo": "IPHONE13",       "ExtraData": {         "IMEI": "123456789012345"       },       "Quantity": 1     }   ],   "ExtraData": {     "SHIPMENT_INFO": "Whatever value you want"   },   "TrackTraceNo": "123",   "TrackTraceUrl": "post.nl/123",   "ReturnTrackTraceNo": "post.nl/return/123",   "Method": "POST_NL",   "ShippedFromCountryCode": "NL" } 

Note that it is not possible to do this procedure using ChannelEngine's web interface, but the related extra data is visible on the shipment level – as shown below.

Adobe Commerce (née Magento)

You must provide an IMEI number in the order line item, within the ExtensionAttributes field in the shipment response model, when creating the shipment. The key and value should be structured as { Name: "imei", Value: imei_number }, and the maximum number of characters allowed for the IMEI is 15.

Shopify

Add a tag with the required IMEI number(s) to the order line item, within the Tags field in the order response model. This must be done before handling the fulfillment.

The tag must be structured as: SKU + colon (:) + IMEI (as in the acronym IMEI) + the IMEI number, without spaces. E.g.: SKU123:IMEI123456789101112.

Note that:

• The SKU is not the same as the Merchant product number – but the product's SKU as seen on Shopify.
• There must be one tag per product, even if it is a quantity higher than one of the same product. E.g.: three products within the same order line need one tag each, and the same is valid for three products in three separate order lines.
• The IMEI must have 15 characters.
• The SKU cannot be longer than 20 characters, as the maximum number of characters allowed by Shopify in the tag is 40.