Consumers Union

Several manufacturers market bandages touted as being waterproof, but those claims, like the bandages themselves, rarely hold water, the Consumers Union said Tuesday. All of the bandages leak at least some of the time and many leak most of the time, the consumer group said. The group tested eight brands of waterproof bandages, asking a panel of 33 people to wear each bandage on a finger for four hours, washing their hands twice and flexing their fingers hourly. The hands were then dipped into room-temperature coffee for 15  to 20 seconds and the pads checked for coffee stains.

Consumers fed up with the rising tide of bank fees helped the nation's credit unions more than double their number of new customers last year, new figures show. More than 1.3 million Americans opened new credit union accounts last year, up from less than 600,000 in 2010, the National Credit Union Administration reported. That brings the number of credit union members to a record 91.8 million. Activists say those numbers might swell even further if major banks try to squeeze more fees out of their customers.

In your editorial ("Heat and Hostility," July 10) you state that Consumers Union is a member of the Consumer Insurance Reform Coalition. We are not. Consumers Union is not a member of any insurance coalition or campaign committee. We have endorsed both Proposition 100 and Proposition 103. We believe that both of these initiatives are a step forward for California consumers. Both of these initiatives would take California closer to sanity in the insane world of skyrocketing insurance rates.

Pamela Johnson of Orange is one of many people who have recently received notices from a debt collector called West Bay Acquisitions over supposedly unreturned Hollywood Video DVDs. The video-rental chain's parent company, Hollywood Entertainment, was purchased by an outfit called Movie Gallery in 2005. Five years later, Movie Gallery went out of business, selling its portfolio of outstanding customer obligations to West Bay Acquisitions. Johnson, 68, said she was "dumbfounded" to receive a notice the other day saying she owes $24.43 for several DVDs that she rented from Hollywood Video in 2009 and never returned.

The publisher of Consumer Reports magazine called on Facebook Inc. to beef up efforts to keep underage users off the social networking site, but Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said he would like children to be able to use the site in the future as an educational tool. Despite growing privacy concerns about preteens using Facebook, the company's co-founder wants changes in a federal law that places restrictions on websites that collect personal information from preteens. Those restrictions are the reason for Facebook's policy that users must be at least 13 years old. "That will be a fight we take on at some point," Zuckerberg said at an education forum this week, according to Fortune magazine.

The economist who founded and guided the Consumers Union through the troubled decades when it was criticized for being part of a communist conspiracy on the one hand and too politically cautious on the other, has died. Colston E. Warne was 87 when he died Wednesday in Bedford, Mass.

Federal regulators said that Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, would recall a free glove compartment organizer that included a flashlight that could overheat and a defective tire gauge it gave to about 15,000 new subscribers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned owners that they should immediately remove the batteries from the flashlight and throw it and the tire gauge away.

Sharper Image Corp. filed a lawsuit against Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, claiming an article in the October issue contains misleading and false statements about the Ionic Breeze Quadra air purifier. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against the Yonkers, N.Y.-based nonprofit product-testing organization. Consumers Union hasn't seen a copy of the lawsuit yet, a spokesman said.

American Isuzu Motors Inc. has sued Consumers Union, accusing the watchdog group of manipulating road tests to cause late model Isuzu Trooper sport-utility vehicles to tip up in sharp turns. Based on those tests, Consumers Union declared in its Consumer Reports magazine that the Trooper is prone to roll over. "The Trooper is a safe vehicle," said Terry Maloney, senior vice president and general manager of American Isuzu Motors.

Lawyers advanced competing conspiracy theories Wednesday as they squared off in Isuzu Motors Ltd.'s product-disparagement and defamation lawsuit against the publisher of Consumer Reports. Isuzu's attorney told jurors that the magazine branded the 1995-96 Trooper sport-utility vehicle as rollover-prone as part of a self-serving publicity stunt. In opening remarks to the jury, Isuzu counsel Andrew M.

Most cellphone and tablet users can purchase digital goods and charge them to their monthly bill or prepaid phone account, but buyers may not get the protections they need if something goes wrong with the transaction, a new report says. According to an analysis by Consumers Union, the protections that consumers receive vary depending on their wireless carrier's policies and what's in their cellphone contract. "We found that consumer rights can vary widely between wireless carriers, and the protections carriers claim to provide are often nowhere to be found in consumer contracts," said Michelle Jun, senior attorney for Consumers Union, the nonprofit advocacy branch of Consumer Reports.

Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars buying gifts during the Christmas season. Inevitably, some people get carried away by the excitement of the season and spend more than they can afford. Here are some tips to make sure you don't end up with a debt headache after the holidays. Budget: "Spend no more than 1.5% of your household annual income on holiday gifts and entertainment," suggests Practical Money Skills, a website operated by Visa. The site offers a holiday budget calculator at http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/holiday . List: Make a list of every person for whom you want to buy gifts.

AT&T Inc.'s $39-billion fight to take over cellular provider T-Mobile USA Inc. has taken another hit. Just two weeks after the U.S. Justice Department sued to block the deal in federal court, California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris and six other state attorneys general have joined the antitrust suit, saying the combination would create a cellular behemoth that would result in less competition in the wireless market and higher prices for consumers. Also, they said, it could kill jobs.

President Obama has a lot on his plate right now. Here's one more thing. A vacancy will soon open on the five-member Consumer Product Safety Commission, which oversees the safety of more than 15,000 types of products, from highchairs to power tools. If left unfilled, the commission could be deadlocked on important policy decisions as the remaining two Democratic and two Republican members vote along ideological lines, as has happened numerous times in the past. "We've dealt with a deadlocked commission before," said Lisa Gilbert, deputy director of Congress Watch, a division of the advocacy group Public Citizen.

BUFFALO, N.Y. – At an office tucked next to Macy's at the Boulevard Mall, Susan Kleimann pushes two sets of papers across a table to a woman in her 40s wearing a gray sweatshirt. "We aren't testing you," assures Kleimann, who runs a market research firm in Bethesda, Md. "We are testing health plan information. " Kleimann explains that they will be comparing the two documents describing two hypothetical insurance plans. "What you tell us today will help us improve the information and be sure that consumers can easily understand what they read about different health plans," she says.

The publisher of Consumer Reports magazine called on Facebook Inc. to beef up efforts to keep underage users off the social networking site, but Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said he would like children to be able to use the site in the future as an educational tool. Despite growing privacy concerns about preteens using Facebook, the company's co-founder wants changes in a federal law that places restrictions on websites that collect personal information from preteens. Those restrictions are the reason for Facebook's policy that users must be at least 13 years old. "That will be a fight we take on at some point," Zuckerberg said at an education forum this week, according to Fortune magazine.

Consumers who buy credit insurance when they take out a loan, buy a car or get a credit card are being overcharged by $2 billion a year, consumer advocate groups said in releasing a study Tuesday. Consumers Union, which publishes "Consumer Reports" magazine, and the Center for Economic Justice, blamed state insurance regulators for what they said is lax supervision of credit insurance sales.

Stung by falling sales in the wake of criticism that its 1995-'96 Trooper utility vehicle may tip over in sharp turns, Isuzu executives rolled out engineering studies, videotapes and reports on Thursday in defense of their product. "Consumers Union's charges are not scientific or credible," Terry Maloney, an Isuzu vice president, told a National Press Club news conference laced with frame-by-frame video footage and scientific talk of lateral acceleration.

The House Financial Services Committee voted to limit the power of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as Republicans continued to fight against the centerpiece of last year's Wall Street reform law. Voting largely along party lines, the Republican-controlled committee approved three bills Friday aimed at reducing the agency's authority as it prepares to begin operations in July. The bureau has power to set and enforce rules on mortgages, credit cards and other consumer lending products, taking authority from the Federal Reserve and other regulators.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission approved creation of a database for consumer complaints, ending two years of wrangling with manufacturers and business groups over the project. Commissioners voted 3 to 2 on Wednesday to get the database up and running by March on the website SaferProducts.gov. The database will allow consumers to submit reports of harm or potential harm caused by a wide variety of products. After commission officials review each report, manufacturers will be given 10 days to respond to or challenge the submission.