THE GOODS : Guardian Angel : In ‘The Consumer Bible,’ Advocate Mark Green Aims to Protect Shoppers From Rip-Offs and Teaches Them How to Save Money

After more than 25 years as a consumer advocate, Mark Green has learned to get straight to the point. “Every day with every purchase,” he writes, without preamble, “consumers have a choice: Get smart--or get taken.”

That’s the opening to his new book, “The Consumer Bible: 1001 Ways to Shop Smart” (Workman Publishing). In his desire to save American consumers from getting taken, Green has assembled an ambitious 656-page shopping guide that leads the reader through the contemporary marketplace from airline tickets to water quality. Faithful use of the “Consumer Bible,” which deals with 64 marketplace categories, can be the equivalent of a 20% pay raise, declares Green, whose years of consumer advocacy includes a decade as one of Ralph Nader’s top associates.

“Most working people, whose real income is shrinking because pay has fallen behind inflation, have already exhausted the options of second-income earners and moonlighting,” he said in a recent telephone interview from his New York office. “Their best way to increase their income now is to save money on purchases.”

And he thinks the onus is especially severe on consumers in this virulently anti-regulatory climate when the average buyer faces an evermore daunting menu of supposed choices. Green, who served from 1990-’93 as New York City’s consumer affairs commissioner, is now the city’s first public advocate--an elective office that formerly was called city council president.

Green has written or co-written more than a dozen books over the past 25 years, taking on corporations, lawyers, lobbyists and others. His 1984 book “Who Runs Congress?” was a million-copy bestseller.

The new book, he said, fills a vacuum created by today’s political climate, which he describes as a “1920s pro-business, pro-merger era,” in which consumer protection goes ignored or opposed. Green thinks the 1978 passage of California’s Proposition 13 was pivotal, kicking off an era that has seen the shrinking of consumer offices around the country and the downsizing of such regulatory agencies as the Federal Trade Commission.

And although he sees this anti-regulatory activity as a cycle that’s bound to reverse, Green, who was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in 1986 and plans to run again, is also an activist. With fewer consumer resources in an increasingly complex marketplace, he decided to assemble the “Consumer Bible,” which, he said, offers a single reference for “about 90% of the things people buy.” (Steve Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America, described it as “the most comprehensive, insightful book available about how consumers can save money.”)

It’s important, he said, because it’s harder to be a smart consumer in today’s economy than ever before. “We used to have three auto companies, three networks and one telephone company to choose from,” he said, “and now we have many.”

It’s a good news/bad news situation in which consumers have much more choice--and less time to spend choosing. As he leads readers through the worlds of supermarkets, car repair, medication, life insurance, clothing, lawyers, vacations, banks, pets and more, Green deals with two basic ways today’s consumer can get taken.

“Most obviously is the consumer rip-offs,” he said. In his Consumer Affairs office, he investigated myriad business abuses, from misleading product advertising to octane pumps that charged for premium gas and delivered regular and supermarket scanners that didn’t recognize sale prices.

“This book describes many rip-offs that are deliberate, malicious and more frequent than the business world would let us think,” he said. Although such businesses are in the minority, he said, their abuses bring a consumer price tag. In his 1985 book, “The Challenge of Hidden Profits,” Green compiled studies on price-fixing, product defects, pollution, bribery and kickbacks, and estimated that the cost to consumers was about 20% of all purchases.

But marketplace deceit is just part of the picture. The other way consumers can get taken, and perhaps more costly, is through what Green terms “expensive lethargy.” “Consumers have a choice,” he explained. “They can spend time or they can spend money.”

In today’s distracted world, who has the time to sort through the options of various interest-bearing checking accounts or the clamor of competing long-distance telephone services?

“Something has to give,” Green said, “and often what gives is that people don’t plan their purchases ahead of time. They pay for their lethargy.”

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His “Consumer Bible,” which he describes as both a rip-off detector and a simple information guide, is his solution. “We have spent several thousands of hours doing consumer research so readers can, in an instant, figure out what decisions to make,” said Green, who acknowledges many co-authors to the book, including staff members at the New York Department of Consumer Affairs.

Green is not only an activist, he is also an optimist as he surveys the state of the economic marketplace. “The consumer movement today still has many stable parts and many stable people--Ralph Nader is out there and the Consumers Union [organized in 1936 and publisher of Consumer Reports] is the great-grandfather of all groups,” he said.

And although he doesn’t see a wave of new organizations rising to meet the changing times, he nevertheless predicts that the “Consumer Century” is upon us, thanks to the computer revolution.

This may not solve problems for an older generation that is not computer-savvy, he said, but the information superhighway with its electronic shopping already offers a whole range of online products. Green foresees a future generation of consumers who, with a click of the mouse, will be able to access essential information about goods and services, compare prices and complaint records, and find out what bank pays the highest CD rates and which airlines has the best fare.

Green sees this revolution as potentially dramatic as the creation of advertising in the mid-1800s: “There will be a ton of consumer information, [which] now takes shopping and calling, right at our fingertips.”

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Don’t Let Them Scam You

Mark Green, whose office of Consumer Affairs received 50,000 complaints over three years, discusses marketplace scams and how to avoid them in “The Consumer Bible.”

Scams: Unscrupulous contractors demand a large down payment before starting a job, do little or no work and disappear; agents for finance companies deceive the elderly into signing a contract that makes home collateral for a high-interest loan.

Tips: Put no money down or at most 10% to 30% and pay installments as the work progresses; hold back a final payment until satisfactory completion; check that the contractor is licensed and bonded.

Scam: Ads trumpet rock-bottom airline fares, but there are no seats available at those prices.

Tips: Don’t be talked into a higher fare when the advertised one is unavailable; use travel agents or reputable airline ticket wholesalers.

Scam: Car lease promotions lure shoppers in with the promise of low monthly payments but make it impossible to compare the cost of buying outright to leasing.

Tips: Look before you lease and concentrate on the contract, which can be loaded with hidden charges; (such as “excess wear and tear”); remember that low monthly payments almost always mean a high payment at one end of the lease.

Scam: Charging up to five times more for a name brand, over-the-counter painkiller.

Tips: Buy no-name or generic medications; comparison shop between stores.