Consumer Reports Takes Consumers Digest to Task
Consumer Reports, the magazine that takes shoddy products to task, is taking aim at a competitor for allegedly exploiting Consumer Reports’ hallmark “Best Buy” designation.
In an unusual “Memo to Members” in the July issue, Consumers Union President Rhoda Karpatkin charges that rival Consumers Digest “has fastened onto a lucrative revenue source: It has adopted the words ‘Best Buy,’ which we have used since 1936, and made them a profit center.”
To try to reduce the confusion, Yonkers, N.Y.-based Consumer Reports is renaming its designation “CR Best Buy,” Karpatkin writes.
Karpatkin said in an interview that Consumers Union is “not foreclosing any legal options” in regard to Consumers Digest.
Consumer Reports, published by the not-for-profit Consumers Union, doesn’t accept advertising and forbids companies to say in ads that a product has received the coveted “Best Buy” designation from the magazine.
On the other hand, Chicago-based Consumers Digest, which was founded in 1959, is very much a for-profit undertaking, Publisher Randy Weber said.
Companies that receive a “Best Buy” rating from Consumers Digest can use the designation in their advertising for one year for a $25,000 “licensing fee,” Weber said. “Best Buy” licensees also receive discounts on advertising placed in Consumers Digest, he said.
“I have nothing to hide,” Weber said. “There is nothing inappropriate going on here.”
Consumer Reports has a circulation of 4.5 million; Consumers Digest has a circulation of 1.1 million.
Karpatkin charged that Consumers Digest’s licensing of its “Best Buy” rips off Consumer Reports and allows manufacturers panned in her publication to confuse consumers into thinking the rating comes from Consumer Reports.
Karpatkin’s memo takes public a behind-the-scenes battle the two magazines have been waging over the issue of the “Best Buy” designation.
Last year, Consumer Reports sent a letter to some manufacturers, complaining about their use of Consumers Digest’s “Best Buy” designation in ads.
