Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! A hundred, a thousand times bash! The metal contraption-known (pardon the expression) as the ”mechanical buttocks”-shows no mercy. It is bashing the daylights out of a poor, defenseless mattress.
Suspended over the mattress, the mechanical buttocks device-also known as ”the basher”-is sending a ramming instrument made of two halves of a bowling ball plunging downward at 230 pounds of pressure per bash. It will crash 100,000 times into the middle of the mattress, the spot that takes the greatest wear, and 25,000 times into the mattress edges, used mainly for sitting.
All this serious scientific research is taking place in a laboratory in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., just across the Westchester County line from the Bronx, where Consumers Union maintains ingenious facilities for testing and comparing consumer products.
Not far from the mechanical buttocks, plastic trash bags undergoing tests are filled with ”clean” garbage and pounded onto cement again and again and again. And, a short distance from there, technicians in white cook up pots of food and dish it all out onto dozens of plates. Nothing is to be eaten, of course; it is all just another test.
The highly influential Consumers Union has been testing and comparing consumer products for 52 years. Results are published in Consumer Reports magazine (circulation: 3.8 million). In the average year, 60 to 70 products, involving 1,500 to 2,000 brand names, are tested. They range from washing machines to zippers, television sets to peanut butter.
Some of Consumers Union`s tests are sophisticated and high-tech: Stereo speakers are tested in an eerie ”anechoic” (echo-less) chamber, filled with sound-absorbing fiber glass wedges. Others are not so sophisticated: Facial tissue is tested on a homemade ”sneeze machine,” composed of a plywood pendulum, an embroidery hoop and a paint sprayer ”sneezing” out compressed air and water. All the tests, however, are exhaustive. The dishes were soiled with more than 20 foods-including egg yolk and cooked cereal-before standing overnight and being used in a dishwasher test.
Non-profit research
Consumers Union is the only independent, non-profit organization in the United States that evaluates and compares brand-name products. As such, it exerts considerable power.
In early June, when Consumers Union declared the four-wheel-drive Suzuki Samurai ”not acceptable”-saying it was so unsafe that Suzuki should buy back every one of the more than 15,000 units already sold in this country-there was immediate reaction. Owners in Chicago and Philadelphia filed class-action suits. American Suzuki Motor Co. defended the vehicles at a press conference televised nationwide. But it later reported that Samurai sales in June of this year-following the Consumers Union report-were 70 percent lower than those the previous June.
Consumers Union`s main criticism of the Samurai was that it toppled over when handling sharp curves at speeds higher than 40 m.p.h. Doug Massa, a Suzuki vice president, took issue with the claim, questioning Consumers Union`s methodology and saying that his company had absolute confidence in the vehicle`s safety and stability.
The Suzuki report marked the first time in 10 years that Consumers Union had rated a vehicle ”not acceptable,” but Suzuki is far from the first manufacturer Consumers Union has severely criticized. Unfortunately for the car company, the organization`s track record is excellent. In 1956, when Consumers Union discovered that 26 of the 39 available automobile seat-belt brands failed to provide adequate protection, industry and government standards were tightened. Similarly, when microwave ovens were introduced and Consumers Union found many radiation levels dangerously high, emission levels industrywide were significantly reduced. In Consumers Union`s half-century history, no manufacturer has ever won a libel suit against it.
”It`s a good day around here when we get sued,” says one of the organization`s technicians, ”because we know we`re right.”
Testing controversy
Suzuki is not alone in questioning the testing procedures, however. Stan Hametz, a Panasonic vice president, says: ”Consumer Reports serves a very useful purpose, but they don`t always compare apples to apples. They might compare a deluxe model to an economy one. They also tend to value certain characteristics more highly than others and so lean toward a certain brand in a subjective way.”
Yugo America Inc., whose Yugo GV automobile was severely criticized in the February, 1986, and February, 1988, issues of Consumer Reports, has a similar objection. Speaking for the company, Fran Jacobs says that Yugo believes that Consumer Reports didn`t put enough emphasis on the fact that the economy car is a low-tech vehicle, is affordable and offers an outstanding warranty. She characterized some of the magazine`s objections as
”subjective.”
Part of the reason that Consumers Union commands respect is that it maintains a reputation for independence. The organization`s $70 million annual operating budget comes entirely from its publications-80 percent from Consumer Reports and the remainder from the sale of books and other written materials. All the products it tests are bought anonymously by trained shoppers at ordinary retail stores. The shoppers (approximately 95 of them working part-time) pay in cash or with their own credit cards, to ensure that they are getting off-the-shelf standards.
Consumers Union does not allow its ratings to be used for advertising purposes. If a manufacturer violates the ban, the organization first sends a letter from its legal counsel, then publishes the manufacturer`s name and address on its ”dishonor roll” (which usually results in thousands of letters to the manufacturer from irate readers) and finally takes the culprit to court.
Readers are involved in Consumers Union`s testing process as well. Every year, the organization sends out a questionnaire-to which it receives approximately 400,000 responses-requesting ”frequency-of-repa ir”
information on such items as automobiles, refrigerators, washing machines, clothes dryers, ranges and color TVs. The questionnaires also solicit information on readers` experiences with services such as automobile insurance, cable TV and chain restaurants. This information is then incorporated into future articles.
Seal of approval
The only other independent organization at all comparable to Consumers Union is the Good Housekeeping Institute, which evaluates those products advertised in Good Housekeeping magazine. The Good Housekeeping Seal is the institute`s limited warranty promising to refund or replace at its own expense any advertiser`s product that proves to be defective. The institute does not, however, attempt to cover Consumers Union`s wide range of products, nor does it make comparative studies.
Consumers Union was founded in 1936 by a band of former employees of Consumers Research, this country`s original product-testing organization publication. The employees left Consumers Research following a labor dispute and, within a few years, their fledgling company had far outstripped their original employer. (Curiously enough, CU is currently going through severe labor problems of its own.) Today, Consumers Research, now based in Washington, D.C., is still publishing (circulation 20,000; available by subscription only). But it no longer conducts tests or rates products. Instead, it features general-interest consumer articles and publishes statistics compiled by individual testing facilities such as the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers or the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Consumers Union`s testing division, employing approximately 90 scientists and technicians, is divided into six units-appliances, electronics, chemistry (including personal-care items), foods, special projects (textiles, gardening, sporting goods) and automobiles. The automobile unit is based in Orange, Conn., and is arguably the most important division of all, as new cars are rated in almost every Consumer Reports issue, and the annual April auto issue sells 400,000 newsstand copies-twice as many newsstand copies as any other.
Not NASA
It is in Mt. Vernon, however, in a turn-of-the-century red-brick building, a former optical factory, that the heart of the company lies.
”NASA laboratories this is not,” Endre Lukacs, one of the inventors of the sneeze machine, says of the Mt. Vernon plant. This dingy, fluorescent-lighted building-which houses the five testing divisions other than the automobile unit-is filled with boxes and more boxes, junk and more junk. The flotsam and jetsam of tests gone by are everywhere.
Yet, the casual, laid-back atmosphere is deceiving. Nothing here is quite so simple as it seems. Take baby carriages. What could be easier or less scientific than testing baby carriages?
Ah, but wait! Meet Werner Freitag, the dapper project leader and baby-care product expert extraordinaire (co-author of the ”Guide to Baby Products,” recently published by Consumer Reports Books). Freitag, dressed in a crisp white lab coat and new gray sneakers, is in the process of performing a battery of sophisticated tests on the 39 stroller models that surround him in his crowded laboratory.
First on Freitag`s agenda is a ”structural-integrity test,” in which a 100-pound deadweight is lowered into the stroller to see if any holes-potentially dangerous to a baby`s inquisitive fingers-develop. Next is a convenience test in which a technician checks to see if a stroller can be folded up with one hand.
In addition, each stroller, equipped with a dummy baby (not just any dummy, but a $1,500 model originally developed for automobile accident testing) is strapped into a circular contraption and moved every which way to see whether the baby will fall out.
”There was a model a few years back that didn`t pass this test,” says Freitag. ”The Safety Commission recalled it.” –
