Consumer Reports Begging For Donations

[Abraham]

I just received an email from Consumer Reports complaining that subscription money isn't enough to do all they want in the way of testing various products and are now begging for monetary donations.

I've had a magazine subscription with them before the internet and now an internet subscription and so they asked if I would continue to support them with a donation.

My gut reaction: NO!

Perhaps, I'm being to harsh, but ...

What say you?

[victory]

I say pay what you think is fair for the value you receive from the products and services you receive frim businesses.

[TxRVer]

They have always done that since they don't sell advertising. I don't find there results useful anymore. I've made bad choices based on their suggestions. I also think they are biased.

[anygunanywhere]

They have always done that since they don't sell advertising. I don't find there results useful anymore. I've made bad choices based on their suggestions. I also think they are biased.

This, plus purtnear everything made is reviewed by someone on the interwebz and you can read it for free.

Anygunanywhere

[C-dub]

They have always done that since they don't sell advertising. I don't find there results useful anymore. I've made bad choices based on their suggestions. I also think they are biased.

This, plus purtnear everything made is reviewed by someone on the interwebz and you can read it for free.

Anygunanywhere

That's also what I figured. However, the caveat with that is the truthfulness and validity of those reviews. Remember the case of some folks being sued because they gave someone a bad review?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/cri ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I don't recall reading reviews on a product that didn't have some bad reviews, but some of them are suspicious. And then I'm kind of a statistical kind of guy and tend to throw out the ones that seem like outliers on either end as being totally over the top for or against the product or company.

I didn't know Consumer Reports was still around because of all the reviews and other sites like Angie's List. I thought they'd have been put out of business years ago, but it sounds like they might be close anyway.

[Abraham]

One other odd consideration about CR is when they give an item a high rating and then provide individual reviews which often completely conflict with the rating.

Given this lack of rating reconciliation between CR's and the individual reviews in addition to being begged for donations (I don't recall this ever being done before, at least to me...) I'm letting my subscription expire.

I detest being begged.

And, the fact that reviews on products and services are to be found everywhere that are probably better (yes, I'm sure some are questionable) than CR means CR is no longer needed.

I have bought a couple of items based on their reviews that were stinkers too...

[talltex]

They have always done that since they don't sell advertising. I don't find there results useful anymore. I've made bad choices based on their suggestions. I also think they are biased.

I can guarantee you they are biased. I was in the new car business for over 30 years, and in the 90's there were a number of models that were sold under different brands that were the same vehicle, just with different emblems and badges. At that time, GM owned part of Toyota, Isuzu and Suzuki. Ford owned part of Nissan, Mazda, Jaguar and Range Rover. Chrysler owned a large part of Mitsubishi. All three of the domestics, sold some models that were built by their foreign partners but with a different model name. There was no difference in the vehicles other than the nameplate....every part was interchangeable....built in the same plants with the same parts and same workers. Consumer Reports would ALWAYS give the import models MUCH higher ratings than the identical domestic counterpart in every category... Quality, Reliability, Expected Repair Costs, and so on. They lost all credibility with anyone in the industry because of that.

[cb1000rider]

I didn't know Consumer Reports was still around because of all the reviews and other sites like Angie's List. I thought they'd have been put out of business years ago, but it sounds like they might be close anyway.

I think they have some value. I don't know if I'd provide a donation. Their tests, well they try to do a good job of apples-to-apples. And not accepting $$ from advertisers perhaps lends to their credibility.

Internet reviews are no replacement. The closest thing for products is probably Amazon. For services:

Yelp - suppresses most reviews, at least based on what I see.. you need to click a very small link to see all of them. Being on the other side of it, Yelp pushes businesses to buy their service and I've heard (2nd hand) that they imply this can improve ratings, maybe by a little more active filtering.

Angie's list - you can buy your way to the top of the list in terms of display.

Google is the most transparent, especially since they make the reviewer pubic (which creates some liability).

[rotor]

I have been a reader for over 25 years. I used to have great faith in their revues but no longer. They have become a left wing progressive magazine pushing Obamacare and other progressive social agenda items. Their medical revues have defects and when I wrote them a letter complaining about their inaccuracy in a medical review they never replied. They don't advertise- what about the hundred cards they stuff into each magazine. I want good reviews on products. I don't care about their wine reviews, their best hospital reviews, their fast food reviews, etc. The car reviews I like. I like the recall's parts. In general though their social commentary on everything just ***** me off. So I finally quit subscribing. Give them more money- no way.

[bryan1980]

I have been a reader for over 25 years. I used to have great faith in their revues but no longer. They have become a left wing progressive magazine pushing Obamacare and other progressive social agenda items. Their medical revues have defects and when I wrote them a letter complaining about their inaccuracy in a medical review they never replied. They don't advertise- what about the hundred cards they stuff into each magazine. I want good reviews on products. I don't care about their wine reviews, their best hospital reviews, their fast food reviews, etc. The car reviews I like. I like the recall's parts. In general though their social commentary on everything just ***** me off. So I finally quit subscribing. Give them more money- no way.

This is what soured me on them as well. Even before Obamacare and all that, I sensed a few progressive undertones in their publications, but they make no bones about where they stand now. No thanks.

[Abraham]

I had no idea of their leftists agenda.

That tears it!

[cb1000rider]

Consumer Reports would ALWAYS give the import models MUCH higher ratings than the identical domestic counterpart in every category... Quality, Reliability, Expected Repair Costs, and so on. They lost all credibility with anyone in the industry because of that.

In the 1990s, which had better quality:
Nissan, Mazda, Jag, Range Rover, Toyota, Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Isuzu, Ford, and Suzuki?

My list:
1) Toyota
2) Nissan
After that, my next answers are all imports too... Ford and GM has some reasonable mid-90s products. Still not as good as the Toyota, Nissan, and Honda products in terms of being reliable.

Jag and Range Rover at the bottom of the list. 90's Rovers are bad news!

I do get what you're saying.. Rating a Toyota better quality than the corresponding Lexus product (same chassis, driveline, etc) doesn't make a ton of sense.

One thing that might explain it - and I'm not saying this is what happened: If they base "reliability" on historically reported problems for the brand. I don't know how else you'd provide a "reliability" estimate on a new vehicle... You'd need to use prior statistics for that Brand. That would explain why a cross branded product might have a better rating... It would mean that they're also ignoring where it was built, which doesn't lend credibility.


I've never used CR for buying cars. Vacuums, washing machines maybe...

[The Annoyed Man]

Consumer Reports would ALWAYS give the import models MUCH higher ratings than the identical domestic counterpart in every category... Quality, Reliability, Expected Repair Costs, and so on. They lost all credibility with anyone in the industry because of that.

In the 1990s, which had better quality:
Nissan, Mazda, Jag, Range Rover, Toyota, Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Isuzu, Ford, and Suzuki?

My list:
1) Toyota
2) Nissan
After that, my next answers are all imports too... Ford and GM has some reasonable mid-90s products. Still not as good as the Toyota, Nissan, and Honda products in terms of being reliable.

Jag and Range Rover at the bottom of the list. 90's Rovers are bad news!

I do get what you're saying.. Rating a Toyota better quality than the corresponding Lexus product (same chassis, driveline, etc) doesn't make a ton of sense.

One thing that might explain it - and I'm not saying this is what happened: If they base "reliability" on historically reported problems for the brand. I don't know how else you'd provide a "reliability" estimate on a new vehicle... You'd need to use prior statistics for that Brand. That would explain why a cross branded product might have a better rating... It would mean that they're also ignoring where it was built, which doesn't lend credibility.

I've never used CR for buying cars. Vacuums, washing machines maybe...

One of the most popular selling vehicles in the 1990s was the Ford Explorer SUV. During the same period, Mazda sold exactly the same vehicle....EXACTLY....badged as the Mazda Navajo. I'd be curious to see how CR reviewed both. Dodge and Mitsubishi had the same thing going with the Dodge Stealth and the Mitsubishi 3000GT.

My son drives a 2009 Pontiac G8 GT, the last year that car was sold in the U.S. The G8 GT is actually an Australian market Holden VE Commodore........a mid-sized 4 door rear-wheel drive sedan with a LS-3 topend mated to a LS-2 bottom end.......basically an earlier Corvette motor. They go like stink. To release it as a Pontiac, the parts were manufactured in Australia, shipped to Mexico for assembly, and then imported and sold as a domestic car. Is it an import? Is it domestic? Is it better or worse than an Australian Holden VE Commodore? BMWs are manufactured in South Carolina. Toyotas are manufactured in San Antonio, Texas. Nissans are manufactured in Tennessee.

I personally drive a 2002 Nissan Pathfinder SE 4x4 that was manufactured in Japan, but you can get the exactly same model, badged the same, with the same features package and color, manufactured the same year.....in Tennessee. Which is the better car? I can tell you that whenever I bring mine to the dealership and they see it was made in Japan, their eyes pop out and they immediately offer to buy it off me. I'm not selling, simply because I like the car, it's reliable, and I don't need the debt. They tell me that there is a difference in the quality of these two identical cars, one made in Japan, and the other in Smyrna, Tennessee. I'm not convinced. What I think is happening is that they think they can get a higher price selling a used Japanese-made vehicle than they can by selling an identical used vehicle that was made in the U.S.........but that is a matter of customer perceptions, and not any kind of reality. Furthermore, those perceptions are driven in part by publications like Consumer Reports, which have done as much to damage the American labor market as any 5th column subversive.

These distinctions might have mattered through about the 1980s, but from about the 1990s on, they haven't mattered one whit. If CR is giving favorable ratings to import vehicles which are identical in all regards to cars made in the U.S., then they are 1) LIARS, and 2) killing jobs in the American auto industry.