Consuming Interest
The Testers Tested
By LESLIE ADRIAN Shopper's Guide looks good in its new format. The spine is perforated and each page can be easily taken out for filing in a box that you can buy for 5s. In its report on kettles, its diagrams and photographs are better and clearer than those in Which? and, all round, it simply looks better than Which?
Both reports are well written, words are not wasted and the language is, as it should be, straightforward and precise, The subject of these reports is a highly complicated one and the edi- tors of both publications obviously went to a good deal of trouble to simplify and clarify. Which? keeps very clearly in mind what ques- tions it thinks the consumer wants answered and begins its report by answering the question it believes many people think about first when buy- ing an electric kettle: how fast does it boil? Which? also believes that its reports should, whenever possible, come to an obvious con- clusion in the form of a recommendation of a best buy or joint best buys. In this case it recommends four joint best buys of one kind and two of another. Moreover, it names three that it does not recommend (because they failed important electrical insulation tests).
Shopper's Guide believes very strongly that it ought not to recommend a best buy because this can be misleading. Which?, by a process of elimination, reduces its list of kettles to those which performed well in the tests and were elec- trically safe and then takes the cheapest of these as the best buys. Shopper's Guide would argue that this method unfairly eliminates good but expensive kettles, and its method is to give you a summary of the results of the tests on every kettle, and so present the summaries that you can, at a glance, choose the one that suits your needs and your pocket best.
My own view is that each method has its draw- backs. With Which? the danger is that you don't get enough information about the 'also rans.' With Shopper's Guide you get some lack of clarity and you have to work harder to find out what the answer to your buying problem is. As an example of lack of clarity: Shopper's Guide says it thinks that one type of kettle is poten- tially dangerous and should not be marketed. I still can't work out which of four possible kettles is the one—and this is something about which no one should be unclear. Which? boldly names the kettles it does not recommend. Shopper's Guide is more charitable, but, on this point, con- fusing.
Which? expects you to read the whole report, but makes it easy for you not to: you can flip over the pages and see what the best buy is. Shopper's Guide expects you to go to some trouble, but goes to some lengths to make the process worth while and as painless as it can. Which method you prefer is up to you. I find that it depends on the product being tested. 10 this case, I think Shopper's Guide's method is a little better. In tests of some other products it could quite easily and helpfully recommend a best buy, but chooses not to do so.
Eirlys Roberts and Elizabeth Gundrey, the two editors, were both kind enough to tell me frankly and in considerable detail how they thought their two reports compared, but I don't think it would be fair to quote them here. I do think, however, and have no hesitation in saying, that both of them are doing us all very considerable service and I refuse to be so ungallant as to do a dis- service to either of them by choosing the other as the better buy.
I have purposely not gone into detail here to show how the two reports differ in their re- sults, partly because it has been done elsewhere (the Guardian, March 9) and partly because it Is for the two editors to defend themselves if they feel the need to do so. I have no doubt that they are both wondering, for example, why it is that one tested thirty-one kettles and the other twenty- three and yet only nine were tested by both, why the same model worked well for one and not for the other and whether, as a result of these dis- crepancies, there is any need for them to recon- sider the basis on which they should conduct their tests.
My strictures on Beaujolais and its proliferation of imitators brought forth the comment from one wine merchant that the name is widely used because 'it is the easiest wine to sell in the busy ness.' Nevertheless, he pointed out, there is sortie honest Beaujolais on the market just now at far less than 10s. to 11s. a bottle. It is the 1961 Vin- tage, still too young to be quite at its best. The 1961 Beaujolais shipped through Wine Agencies (London) from Coron Pere et Fils costs 8s. 9d. I am told that Sado and King sell it 10 and around London, and Gale, Lister in Leeds. For spring and summer drinking Coron also supply a white and a pink Beaujolais at 9s.
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