Consumer Reports uses ad to get message across

Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times writes Monday about how Consumer Reports magazine has advertised, for the fourth consecutive year, in newspapers about the traps of Christmas shopping.

Perez-Pena writes, “The new ad, appearing in USA Today, says, ‘It’s time we told retailers how you feel about their pushy holiday-season practices.’ Then it cites results from a national survey showing that most Americans do not like it when store employees ask them to sign up for store credit cards, ask for phone numbers or e-mail addresses, push extended product warranties or fail to open more checkout lanes when there are lines.

“Consumer Reports said it had paid $143,000 for the ad.

“‘I wouldn’t say there’s less need’ than in the boom years, James A. Guest, president and chief executive of Consumers Union, the advocacy group that publishes the magazine, said. ‘People are buying less, but people want to be smarter buyers.’

“Extended warranties are a particular peeve for Consumer Reports, which has inveighed against them for years. They were the subject of the first in its series of holiday season ads, in 2006, prompting an opposing ad in USA Today from the Service Contract Industry Council, a group representing the sellers of those warranties.”

Read more here.