response 1 of 12:

Jan 16 01:40 UTC 1996

My experience is that you have to have a clear idea what you expect froma
product before you can decide whether Consumer Reports has a useful opinion
on the product for your purposes.

As a 'frinstance, CR rates shampoo on quite a few things, how clean your hair
is after, how the shampoo smells, how much lather, etc.  That's cool, but they
don't rate the shampoo's long term effect on your hair.  If you keep your hair
short, that wouldn't be relevant ... if it does damage, well, you were gonna
cut off the ends anyway.  But my hair is 3 feet long and 14 years old.  (Well,
OK, I know it's all fallen out at least once or twice at some point during
that, but you get the idea.)  

If I use a shampoo that is too harsh, it might make my hair feel great for
a wash or two ... but ina  few months, the ends will be like straw and the
top will be frizzy.  

response 3 of 12:

Jan 16 14:55 UTC 1996

I look through them when the opertunity arrises, however have found them of
limited use.  When time comes to purchase a car, washer, etc. I try to find
a relevant copy.  I have run into several situations where no information
would have been more usefull then the information they provided.  i.e. My
mom wanted a new vacuum cleaner and consulted a two year issue in the library.

When she headed out to find the top rated model, the dealer informed her that
the model had been discontinued because of reliability problems a year or so
down the road.  They simply don't have the abbility to judge the over all
quality of sort-run items like that.  All they can do is see how well it picks

up nails and such.  I value their car reports more since they seem to collect
statistics over seveal years and get owner feedback.  There was / is a big
stink, in some circles, about the refrigerator review they did a few years
back.  CR found that the all-time meager energy sipper, Sunfrost, was being
chalanged, and even surpassed, by some of the cheaper, mass produced,
comercial variants.  The jury is still out on that one ;)

response 5 of 12:

Jan 23 12:34 UTC 1996

I find them somewhat to extremely useful, depending on the product.
I often do not find the exact model numbers they mention. But they
are so good at telling what features to look for and giving reliability
estimates. I often guage brand reliability by their reports and buy
a mid value model based on that. They often rate top of the line models,
which cost more than I usually want to pay. They are very good whether
you want a product with all the features or just some of them.

response 7 of 12:

Jan 26 07:33 UTC 1996

Are those returns because of unreliability, or a mix of causes? 
CR often remarks on who makes what brands. I think they at least know
that. By the way, I haven't noticed a ranking of "reliability" in CR.
Can you give me an example? They list "repair history", and they
do give statistics: I'm looking at a table of repair histories for
microwave ovens. They polled members on mid-size ovens and got
63,000 responses, from which they got a range of percent of each
brand that needed repair from 4% to 9%, and they state that a difference
of 3 "points" or less is not meaningful. Seems to me that they are
being pretty straight forward and honest.

response 9 of 12:

Oct 13 11:36 UTC 1997

I have little faith in CR's sneaker walker too.  My sneakers tend to
rot out from the inside out due to perspiration.  Nylon can take it
while any kind of leather or leatherlike product rots out.  Same goes
for watch bands, BTW.  Does the sneaker walker simulate a sweaty foot
as it walks?  I doubt it.  If it did all the things a real foot did,
I'd bet most shoes would outlast the sneaker walker ;-)

response 11 of 12:

Oct 30 19:16 UTC 1997

I use those "old" ratings as a way to decide about the new models.  If Maytag
hasnt made a change to a significant part on the washer, then the new model
is ok by me.  If the salesperson tells me about the "all new engineering" I
grin, and walk away.