What is Consumer Reports?

Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports cover dated November 2005 Consumer Reports cover dated November 2005
Editorial Director	Kevin McKean
Categories	Consumer advocacy
Frequency	Monthly
Circulation	4,000,000 / month
Publisher	Consumers Union
First issue	January 1936
Country	United States
Language	English
Website	consumerreports.org
ISSN	0010-7174

Consumer Reports is an American magazine published monthly by Consumers Union. It publishes reviews and comparisons of consumer products and services based on reporting and results from its in-house testing laboratory. It has approximately 4 million subscribers^[1] and an annual testing budget of approximately $21 million U.S.^[2] The annual Consumer Reports new car issue, released every April, is typically the magazine's best-selling issue and is thought to influence millions of automobile purchases.

Objectivity

Consumer Reports stands behind its objectivity and freedom from bias, although a few companies have challenged this in court .

Consumer Reports does not print outside advertising or permit the commercial use of its reviews for selling products, and it states that this eliminates one possible source of bias.

Consumer Reports states that all tested products are purchased at retail by its staff, that no free samples are accepted from manufacturers and that this avoids the possibility of bias from bribery or from being given "better than average" samples.

Ancillary publications

ConsumerReports.org, the related website, claims more paid subscribers than any other publication-based Web site. Most of its information is available only to paid subscribers.

With short life-cycle products such as electronics, the reviewed product has often been replaced or discontinued prior to publication. ConsumerReports.org provides updates on product availability, and adds new products to previously published test results.

Furthermore, for copies distributed in Canada, there is a small four page supplement explaining how the magazine's findings apply to that country and lists the examined items available there.

In 2002, Consumers Union launched the grant-funded project Consumer Reports WebWatch, which aims to improve the credibility of Web sites through investigative reporting, publicizing best-practices standards, and publishing a list of sites that comply with the standards. WebWatch has worked with the Stanford Web Credibility Project, Harvard University's Berkman Center, The Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, and others. WebWatch is a member of ICANN, the W3C and the Internet Society. Its content is free.

In 2005 Consumers Union launched the service Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs, which takes publicly available (but difficult to comprehend) studies on pharmaceutical effectiveness and combines them with pricing information in an easy-to-read format.

Also in 2005 Consumers Union launched the service Greener Choices, which is meant to "inform, engage, and empower consumers about environmentally-friendly products and practices." It contains information about conservation, electronics recycling and conservation with the goal or providing an "accessible, reliable, and practical source of information on buying “greener” products that have minimal environmental impact and meet personal needs."

Lawsuits vs. Consumers Union

In 1981 the Bose Corporation sued Consumer Reports (CR) magazine for libel. CR reported in a review that the sound from the system that they reviewed "tended to wander about the room". The District Court found that CR "had published the false statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of its truth or falsity". The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's ruling, and the United States Supreme Court affirmed in Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., finding that that CR's statement was made without actual malice, which was the standard in cases where the First Amendment was involved; and therefore was not libelous.^[3][4][5]

In 1996, Consumers Union (CU) published a report indicating that the 1995-96 Isuzu Trooper sport utility vehicle had demonstrated a "tendency to roll over in certain situations" in its tests, and that it had determined that this was "not acceptable". In a press conference, it called on Isuzu to discontinue sales and recall Troopers already sold, and continued to issue warnings about the Trooper, advising the public not to buy the vehicle, and suggesting that federal officials should launch an investigation into possible product defects. Isuzu filed a lawsuit against CU as a result of the article; the court ruled that CR had made "numerous false statements" and had put the Isuzu through tests that competitors were not subjected to, but though eight of ten jurors wanted to assign punitive damages, they did not find enough evidence of malicious intent and did not assign Isuzu cash damages.^[6]

In December 1997, however, the Trooper distributor in Puerto Rico sued CU, alleging that it had lost sales as a result of CU's disparagement of the Trooper. But the trial court granted CU's motion for summary judgment, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the favorable judgment, on the grounds that CU had mentioned only Isuzu and the Trooper, not the distributor specifically; since the challenged statements were not "of and concerning" the distributor, they would be precluded from suing for any injuries suffered as a result of the statements.^[7]

Related to this suit, in 1988, CU published that the Suzuki Samurai had demonstrated the same tendency to roll and deemed it "not acceptable." In July 2004, this suit was settled and dismissed with no money changing hands.^[8][9]

In 2003, Sharper Image sued CR in California for product disparagement, over negative reviews of its Ionic Breeze Quadra air purifier. CR moved for dismissal on October 31, 2003, under California's Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) law, and the case was dismissed in November 2004, on the grounds that the Sharper Image "has not shown that the test protocol used by Consumers Union was scientifically, or otherwise, invalid," and had not "demonstrated a reasonable probability that any of the challenged statements were false." The decision also awarded CU $525,000 in legal fees and costs.^[10][11]

Controversy over child safety seats

The February 2007 issue of Consumer Reports stated that only two of the child safety seats it tested for that issue passed the magazine's side impact tests. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which subsequently retested the seats, found that all those seats passed the corresponding NHTSA tests at the speeds described in the magazine report. The CR article reported that the tests simulated the effects of collisions at 38.5 mph. However, the tests that were completed in fact simulated collisions at 70 mph.^[12] CR stated in a letter from its president Jim Guest to its subscribers that it would retest the seats. The magazine issue with erroneous findings has not been recalled, but the letter states that after the seats are retested, the results of that test will be published. The article was removed from the CR website, and on January 18 2007 the organization posted a note on its home page about the misleading tests. Subscribers were also sent a postcard apologizing for the error.

On January 28, 2007, Joan Claybrook, who served on the board of CU from 1982 to 2006 (and was the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 1977 to 1981), discussed the sequence of events leading to the publishing of the erroneous information. The magazine contracted with Calspan to do the actual testing; due to miscommunication, the tests were conducted (using test sleds) at an actual speed of 38 miles per hour. In fact, since automobiles in a crash continue to move after the crash—rather than absorbing all the energy of impact as a test sled does—a test sled impact of 38 miles per hour is considered equivalent to an automobile crash of 70 miles per hour; to replicate an automobile crash of 38 miles per hour, as was intended, the test sled crash should have been carried out at 20 miles per hour.

Claybrook admitted that the magazine should have been motivated to double-check the surprising results; however, she also pointed out that CR was attempting to execute what should have been NHTSA's work. "Consumer Reports does not conduct crash tests save for low-speed bumper-impact tests," she stated. "It has limited expertise in designing such [crash] tests." She further noted that in 2000 Congress had mandated NHTSA to define a set of tests and issue a set of safety standards for child restraints within two years, but that NHTSA still had not yet done so, "though it took less than ten days to evaluate Consumer Reports’ testing and find the error." ^[13]

Other errors or issues

In 2006, Consumer Reports said six hybrid vehicles would probably not save owners money. The magazine later discovered that they had miscalculated depreciation, and released an update saying that four of the seven vehicles would save the buyer money, if the vehicle was kept for five years (including the federal tax credit for hybrid vehicles, which expires after each manufacturer sells 60,000 hybrid vehicles). ^[14]

In February 1998, the magazine tested pet food and claimed that Iams dog food was nutritionally deficient. They later retracted the report claiming that there had been "a systemic error in the measurements of various minerals we tested – potassium, calcium and magnesium." They stated they would conduct the study again and publish the results but have yet to do so. ^[15]

In July 1996, Consumer Reports tested motor oils in a fleet of taxi cabs. In their article, they noted that "Big-city cabs don't see many cold start-ups or long periods of high speed driving in extreme heat. But our test results relate to the most common type of severe service - stop-and-go city driving." They were unable to see a "meaningful" difference between any brands of oil which carried the API starburst symbol, but suggested that synthetic oil is "worth considering for extreme driving conditions high ambient temperatures and high engine load or very cold temperatures." ^[16] This research was criticized by some because most engine damage appears to be caused by cold starts, and their research method may not have included enough cold starts to be representative of personal vehicle use.^[17]

In the July, 1978 issue, Consumer Reports rated the Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon car "not acceptable", the first cars it had judged such since the AMC Ambassador, in 1968. In its testing they found the possibility of these models developing an oscillatory yaw as a result of a sudden violent input to the steering; the manufacturer claimed that "Some do, some don't" show this behavior, but it has no "validity in the real world of driving".^[18] Nevertheless, the next year, these models included a lighter weight steering wheel rim and a steering damper; Consumer Reports reported that the previous instability was no longer present.

See also

• Good Housekeeping Institute
• List of Consumer Reports Automobile Tests
• Underwriters Laboratories
• Which?

References

• "Our Mission". Retrieved July 09, 2005.
• "Consumers Union Shopping and Testing". Retrieved July 09, 2005.
• Consumer Reports reverses practice of recommending all new Toyota cars and trucks, Oct 16, 2007 ("Consumer Reports will no longer recommend any new or redesigned Toyota-built models without reliability data on a specific design," the publication said in a statement. "Previously, new and redesigned models were recommended because of the automaker's excellent track record.")

External links

• Official website
• Consumers Union