Bryan_Carey's Full Review: Consumer Reports Magazine Subscription
Consumer Reports is a monthly publication from Consumers Union, a non- profit organization that was founded in 1936 with the mission to “test, inform, and protect”. This organization buys all sorts of consumer products, tests them for effectiveness, efficiency, etc., and then publishes the results to keep buyers informed before they make a purchase.
Basic Contents of This Magazine:
With Consumer Reports, you can count on a full magazine that is dedicated to its cause. The magazine is free of any and all advertisements, so you can be assured that all of the pages remain focused on the Consumers Union Mission. The sections of each issue are as follows:
Cover Report- This is a full- coverage article, usually 5 to 10 pages in length, that discusses in detail the featured merchandise item on the cover of each issue.
Features- This forms the bulk of each issue of Consumer Reports. These are the featured food/merchandise items of the month, with side by side comparisons between different brand names. You can find anything here from aspirin, to shoes, to food processors. There are typically between 5 and 10 featured items in every issue.
Your Letters- This department is found near the front of every issue. It’s simply a one- page section that includes some of the letters that subscriber’s have submitted in the last month.
Test, Inform, Protect- This can be found right after the Letters department. It’s a one- page article on some sort of consumer awareness subject, like “should fluoride be added to drinking water” or “Is Nutrasweet really a safe product”, etc.
Memos to Members- Written by Consumer Reports president Jim Guest, this is a one- page article about something of interest to consumers. The topic of the month varies greatly.
Front Lines- This department contains a few quick tips on consumer products and often a few featured items that are either brand new or are currently in the development stages.
Product Updates/Product Recalls- Product Updates are not featured in all issues. This is a section that talks about “what’s new” in a particular section of the manufacturing market. Product Recalls, on the other hand, is included in most every issue and it contains valuable information on products that manufacturers have found to be defective and have ordered a recall.
Brands: Where to Call- If you are interested in the reviews you read and would like more information, this section will provide the phone numbers and web sites so that you can contact manufacturers and service providers directly.
Index- Found at the end of each issue, this is a one- year index of all the tested products for the past 12 months. You can lookup articles by brand name (Ford, General Electric, etc.) or by general term (microwave ovens, toasters, etc.). The index will tell you which monthly issue and what page number to consult, to find the article you need.
Selling It- This is found on the inside back cover of each issue. It includes copies of actual ads that could be deceptive, manufacturer claims that are possibly unfounded, and sometimes even some humorous ads that will tickle your funny bone.
Other Featured Articles:
There are a few other departments in Consumer Reports that pop up from time to time, but are not necessarily featured in every single issue. Included here are sections like “Benefactors and Lifetime Members”, “Auto Parts”, “Home Front” and a few others. They all deal with keeping the consumer aware of what he/she is buying.
Pricing:
Consumer Reports sells for $3.99 at the newsstand, but you can subscribe for a rate of about $26 per year (13 issues). This subscription rate usually includes other incentives, too, like a copy of the Annual Buying Guide, published by Consumers Union each year. You can shop on- line, through retail magazine sites, and sometimes find deals that are even better than this.
Final Thoughts:
Consumer Reports is a magazine I have been reading on and off for the past 15 years. I first became interested in the magazine as a teenager, when I was shopping for a bicycle and noticed that bikes were the featured item in one of the monthly issues. I didn’t subscribe until last year, when I received an offer from Consumer Reports that included a full- year of the magazine, plus the annual Buyers Guide and another guide, for only $20. That seemed like a good deal to me, so I went ahead and subscribed.
Consumer Reports is great for people who don’t like pages and pages of advertising. Each issue is about 60 to 70 pages in length, and there is no product advertising at all. When you consider that 50 percent or more of the pages of many magazines are covered with ads, it’s a refreshing change to read a publication without so many distractions. Even though the magazine is only about 65 pages in length, it’s the equivalent of an ordinary magazine that’s 130 pages in length. It’s a good idea that they don’t accept any ads because if they did, readers would likely become suspicious that the magazine was biased. Besides that, some companies would also have a problem placing ads in a magazine that doesn’t endorse its products. There would be a constant battle going on, at Consumer Reports, over whether or not to accept a big offer from a potential advertiser, with the condition that Consumer Reports write only favorable reviews. This would ruin the integrity of the magazine.
People who read Consumer Reports do so mainly for the product ratings and product research. I admit, I was a little bit skeptical of this magazine at first because I was suspicious that perhaps the ratings were biased in some way. After reading more, it appears that there is no bias at all. For one thing, it’s very common to see two different models of a product, from the same manufacturer, with one rated high and the other one low. For example, the issue that I’m looking at right now (December, 2002) has a rating guide on coffee makers. There are 21 models that are rated and Black & Decker has four on the list. One model ranks highly- in third place overall and it received the “CR Best Buy recommendation”, which is given to products that are reasonably priced and still high quality. But the other Black & Decker models rank 5, 12, and 20th. The wide spread in ratings shows that there is no bias toward this company, or else they would all rank high.
I like the trademark “colored circles” that Consumer Reports uses for its ratings. A solid, orange circle stands for excellent; half orange half white is very good; white is good; half black and half white is fair; and all black is poor. You can visually locate the best and worst, using this system. Consumer Reports uses these circles for different aspects of a product. For instance, with cookware, each brand is rated according to how evenly they heat, how durable they are, and how easy they are to clean, with a colored circle next to each category. They are then given an overall score, and ranked from best to worst. Not all products use the “colored square” rating system (the coffeemakers didn’t), but I think it makes it easy to locate items that suit your needs, due to the visual component. It’s faster than reading words.
There are some articles/ratings in Consumer reports that I don’t take as seriously as others. I think the ratings of manufactured goods are top- notch. But the ratings on edible consumer goods can only be used as a general guideline. The reason, of course, is that everyone’s taste buds are different. Just because Consumer Reports recommends that I eat Kellogg’s All Bran instead of Honey Nut Cheerios doesn’t mean that my palate is going to agree. They typically base their food ratings, in part, on nutritional value, which is ok, but I would rather taste honey and oats than something that tastes like small broken twigs from an oak tree. The same is true of Consumer Reports ratings of fast- food, wines, and other food and drink. They try to be as objective as possible, but only one’s personal tastes can make the final decision.
Consumer Reports is, in my opinion, a valuable magazine that is priced fairly (for the subscription, anyway). Some of its articles might come across as too impersonal, because they deal strictly with facts. But that’s what you need, with a consumer- rating guide like this. You don’t want subjectivity. You want the facts, and only the facts, so that you can make the best possible shopping decision.
Consumer Reports is a very informative, practical magazine. I recommend reading it, before you make any important buying decision.
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