[Greenbuilding] Consumer Reports unbiased? was: What car do yousuggest?

[Bob Korves]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Reuben Deumling" <9watts at gmail.com>
To: <greenbuilding at listserv.repp.org>
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 4:07 PM
Subject: [Greenbuilding] Consumer Reports unbiased? was: What car do 
yousuggest?


> To bring this back to green building (or a little closer to it), I
> can't speak authoritatively to how Consumer Reports goes about testing
> cars, but I can say a few words about how they have gone about testing
> household refrigerators. With respect to refrigerators CR has done a
> rather poor job over the past few decades of
>
> (a) testing the refrigerators people actually buy, as well as
>
> (b) testing a selection of refrigerators that includes the major types
> and sizes.
>
> Most of us I think would be forgiven for assuming that their selection
> accounts for both of these parameters. It isn't as if they were new to
> this game. But in fact, to use figures from 2004, according to the NPD
> Group the average purchase price of new refrigerators US consumers
> bought in that year was $534 (median) and $668 (mean), while the
> selection of models Consumer Reports tested averaged $1,200 (median)
> and $1,791 (mean). Similar discrepancies arise with respect to size.
> The EIA in its 2001 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS)
> ascertained that 53% of the fridges we have in our households are
> 18.4 cubic feet or smaller, and 46% of them are 18.5 cubic feet or
> larger, while the selection tested in 2002 by CR was only 12% in the
> smaller size category, and 88% above 18.5 cubic feet.
>
> As for their testing covering the range of possible sizes and types,
> over the past twenty years CR has tested refrigerators smaller than 18
> cubic feet exactly once--in 1996--and then only to criticize them.
> Manual defrost models last made an appearance in 1974, Single door
> refrigerators, either with a freezer compartment inside, or those
> called all-refrigerators have not been featured since the early
> sixties. Their target audience is a well-off upper middle class family
> who can be persuaded that the refrigerator is a fashion object. None
> of the refrigerators they have tested in the past fifteen to thirty
> years have been well-matched in size to the one-or two-person
> households that make up the majority of US households. This is not to
> say that many of us haven't gotten used to 18 or 20 or even 22 cubic
> foot fridges for one or two people. But that ex-post finding is not a
> terribly useful finding given the less-than-level field in which to
> encounter new refrigerators, at least in Consumer Reports. And yet,
> the discrepancy in average size and price described above should give
> an indication of how far apart the preferences of US residents and of
> Consumer Reports engineers still are when it comes to fridges.
>
> Interestingly this was not always the case. Up until the late forties,
> Consumer Reports went to great lengths to test a more representative
> slice of the population of refrigerators, always making sure that
> basic models were included, and consistently criticizing the appliance
> industry for trying to talk its (female) customers into bigger, more
> expensive models. Nowadays, though, this is all a thing of the past.
> In their 2004 refrigerator test they quipped "You can never be too
> rich or have too much fridge space."
>
> Reuben Deumling
----------------------------------------------------------

I agree with you, Reuben.  I posted similar comments on another group and
was crucified for standing up against Consumer Reports.

In addition to your comments also note that their name starts with
"Consumer".  It is understood as a given that you need to buy something.
That may be good for the corporatocracy, but not for people interested in
green building.  Sometimes it is better to just do without, which is not
likely to be CR's advice .

CR has close relationships with manufacturers.  Does that taint their
reports?  Like labor unions and politicians, sometimes the upper management
relates to the manufacturers and corporations better than to their
constituents.

I am not a regular reader of CR.  While casually perusing their magazine in
waiting rooms I have noticed that sometimes, on products that I am quite
familiar with, I was appalled at the sample mix, which was not
representative of the industry in my mind, and also of the test parameters,
which often seemed designed for easy results rather than important
attributes of the product class.

How many people do you suppose buy something that they didn't even know they
needed until they read about the commodity in CR and found out which model
was best?

I could go on, but I probably have already posted enough to be crucified
for...

Now I suppose that CR does lots of good for lots of people, and that is
truly wonderful -- but that doesn't automatically make them saints.
-Bob Korves
P.S.  I have similar concerns with this group.  This is a group with quite a
few professional builders and designers, which is a good thing because one
can ask questions to professional people that do the type of work that is
related to the question asked -- and that is great.  What I really notice,
though, is that most of the questions from the professionals are asking
about products to sell to their clients.  Now, that makes sense, I guess,
but what is interesting is that rarely do I see answers that advise the use
of other than a new, commercial product.  I understand that the client has
asked for something, and you are trying to provide it, and that is how you
make your living, but sometimes the honest thing to do is to recommend doing
without entirely.  I don't much hear that option on this group, like I do on
end user populated green groups.  It's really too bad that greenbuilding has
to buy into the consumer economy, just with a different set of products.
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