Consumers Union Wants You to Share Your Story

dcgirl20006 writes "Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports launched a new site to help consumers across the country who are dealing with phone bills, cell phone contracts, cable packages and Internet scams. Consumers experiencing problems are not alone. The site is searchable and consumers can find one that most closely matches the situation in which they are in. We don't have all the answers to every problem consumers may face, but some consumers have shared solutions and suggestions."

Comments

Consumer Voice

[DA-MAN]

Alright! All too often, the consumers voice is lost in the shuffle.

I attempted to submit questions about a company that bit me on Slashdot, just to see if I was the only one. After numerous rejected stories I ended up writing an article, and submitting it to OSNews.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10532

one bad report doesn't make a bad product / svc

[farble1670]

when i was looking to buy an MP3 player, i started researching my first choice, player A. to my dismay, i found tons of negative feedback about A. i then looked at B. tons of feedback about B. then C ... etc. every player i looked at had a lot of negative feedback. the point is, there are always some number of disgruntled customers. such online reporting cannot be used as an accurate guage of quality. if five people cry foul, you cannot say if it's 5 out of 10, or 5 out of a million.

Re:one bad report doesn't make a bad product / svc

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually *like* seeing negative feedback reviews, since they evaluate a product much more critically than positive reviews.

As a case in point, I was looking on Amazon for a MP3 player -- one product had tons of good reviews, and I was seriously considering buying it, but I found a few negative comments that noted that the player's shuffle capability was notably erratic.

Bottom line: Complains may not be an "accurate gauge of quality", but they *will* clue you into faults that appear post-facta.

My story

[pHatidic]

I bought a phone at Verizon that said it had a battery life of 110 hours. When I actually used it, it lasted 48 hours or less. Now I understand that they fudge it a little, but less than half? So I went down there, and they had the audacity to tell me that the battery life listed was for when the phone was turned off!

So then the phone says "change battery" and I went to tell them that I needed a new battery since the phone was under warranty. They said that "change battery" just meant charge battery. So I said, "so you mean its just broken, and it means charge the battery instead of change the battery?" and they said, "yeah." So I said, "Well then THAT MEANS THE PHONE IS FARKING BROKEN" in front of their entire store full of customers, and everyone started cracking up. They kicked me out of the store, and I was planning on coming back that night and torching it but I pussed out.

All Hype. What is the benefit? How does it help?

[grolaw]

Has anybody actually read CR recently? Better still, who has compared the CR from the 1970's with the 2000's? The evaluations and the NEGATIVE reports have been supplanted by mostly happy-talk and non-substantive reviews of major manufacturers products.

The on-line CR has even less to recommend itself. Now they are putting the public out-front to eat the defamation actions where the old CR would have done the research and published the dirt.

I blame the CR board member Burnele Powell, a law professor and law school dean. Who better to blame than the lawyers?

Re:Customer Care

[tomhudson]

Bullshit.

If the item or service you want did not exist you could never have been offered it.

Wanna bet? Google for "bait and switch".

49,400 hours a year spent on the phone with people just like you

There are only 8,760 hours in a year.

At any point in time I have access to you SSN your address your bank account numbers your credit card numbers I even know when you were born!

No you don't. It's illegal for you as a helldesk monkey to have access to that information. Go to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.00

Have a pen and paper ready. I mean really.

Fuck you! I want an email confirming what was said, whether its an RMA or a cancellation. Not just my notes.

Avoid the following phrase "you people".
...
Don't swear. If you swear you are in twice as much trouble, we will actually go out of our way to make your life hell.

Which is why, when "you people" don't know how to do your job, we, the consumers, have every right to say "fuck you", give me a supervisor.

Re:All Hype. What is the benefit? How does it help

[fermion]

CR has been increasingly neutered by corporation who abuse the courts to protect their defective products. CR does provide reasonably independent reviews on how a product might reasonably function with an average consumer under reasonable conditions. Although I have disagreed with some conclusions, I have seldom found thier methods truly suspect.

Most reductions in quality are probably due to fact that the courts are becoming less a protector of individual freedom, and more a tool to insure corporate profit. Since CR is not out to make a profit selling shitty profits, they cannot afford to fight long battles in court. OTOH, corporations are masters are abusing the courts and wasting the time of judges. The corporation know how to extend lawsuits, thereby purposefully increasing fines to huge amounts, and then complain about excessive damages, resulting in awards far less than court costs, and minimal compensation to the injured consumer.

There is really no way for the public to get an accurate picture of a product in a world where the corporation is free to use the courts as thier personal PR department.

And, to address you real concern, CR has always published certain complaints from consumers. Like anything on the net, one has to take it with a grain of salt. Of course, corporations want the average person to beleive everything he or she reads so they can sell thier penis elargement pills.

Re:The alarm is the easy part

[digitalvengeance]

The monitoring is not useful for that purpose in many cities. My father and I discussed this a few months ago. (He is a Captain on the Sheriff's office where I grew up.)

Many departments don't respond to alarm calls as emergency calls anymore as the vast majority of them are false alarms. That means that they'll fit you in along side the noise complaints etc. and not actually come running lights/siren just because the alarm went off.

His advice? Buy the alarm.. get nice loud speakers inside *and* outside of the house and ditch the monitoring service. If someone is determined enough to continue into your home after a loud speaker alerts everyone in the neighborhood to their presence, they are determined enough to kill you before the cops get even close.

And not to start a flame war - but thats also why I believe in having a gun available for home defense.

Josh.