Consumers Digest

Consumers Digest is an American for-profit magazine that allows companies to use its reviews for marketing purposes.

The magazine awards its Consumers Digest Best Buy seal to products its staff judges to be of the best quality for the most reasonable price--or so it would like the public to believe. This "magazine" is nothing but the front end for an elaborate scam; one that I know from the inside. This "magazine" has NO subscribers, almost NO circulation, and NO credibility.

Randy Weber, the publisher, and Richard Dzierwa, the editor, choose products to win the "Best Buy" award. This award is a large part of the scam, as I will reveal.

It works like this: most people mistake the legitimate product review magazine "Consumer Reports" for the phony "Consumers Digest." This name-confusion is a large part of making the scam work successfully.

The products that win the "Best Buy" award are usually made by either foreign companies or companies that want to perpetuate the scam for their own reasons. NO products are "tested" at the Consumers Digest offices, ever. The writers (usually outside freelancers) are told to write a phony "comparison article" in which the company that makes the "winning product" is preferably foreign or of a size that Consumers Digests credentials cannot be easily checked. For example, an article about vacuum cleaners will likely have Dyson, Inc. as a winner because they are a British company.

Here's where the scam comes in. The "winning company" is told that they have won the "Consumers Digest Best Buy Seal." Exciting! Only thing is, the winning company must pay tens of thousands of dollars (I have a pricing schedule and MANY other documents/memos showing that this scam is the reason for Consumers Digest's existance) for print insertions in which the "Consumers Digest Best Buy Seal" is featured (charged by insertion usually) and HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars to feature the "Consumers Digest Best Buy Seal" in television ads. If the company uses the "Consumers Digest Best Buy Seal" without paying Mr. Weber his money, he promptly sues the company and tries to rescind the good publicity he gave the company's product in later issues.

Most companies (such as Tempur-Pedic, Suzuki, Christian Children's Charities, Dyson, and countless others) eventually figure out that the "Consumers Digest Best Buy Seal" is a scam--especially once they see that the magazine is only sold at very few bookstores and newsstands in the Chicago region and cannot be subscribed to--and pull this phony award from their advertising quickly. Many sue the publisher who hides behind shell corporations in different states (the magazine is "published" in Illinois). Of course, by the time the companies get their day in court--if ever--most settle for very little because they do not want the public to know how they were suckered--thereby sullying their name and their products.

Of course, one or two "legitimate" articles are featured each issue, such as a tire comparison perhaps. Let's say that Bridgestone wins. Mr. Weber would NEVER try to "sell" the "Consumers Digest Best Buy Seal" to a large American company such as Bridgestone, because they'd find him out in a split-second! So they are not informed of their "award." See the long-term genius in how the scam works? The publisher's father, Arthur, has been using this magazine and its attached scam for many, many years. The whole family is in on it, of course.

A very nice little scam for Mr. Weber...and under US Law it's all legal. It all depends on people not doing their homework and mistaking the bogus "Consumers Digest" for the legitimate and decidedly non-phony "Consumer Reports."

Note: I worked for this company for nearly eleven years as a "writer" writing the "fluff" that goes between the phony reviews (such as "News! Vitamin C may be good for colds!") So many people sued Mr. Weber that myself and 30 other writers with more tenure than myself were given a day's notice to vacate the office because Mr. Weber could no longer pay rent or make good on payroll--after which Mr. Weber disappeared along with Consumers Digest for nearly three years before trying this scam yet AGAIN--this time based at 520 Lake Cook Road in Deerfield, IL.

Check the Audit Bureau of Circulation if you doubt my claims! Perhaps 6-7,000 magazines are printed each two-month period--almost none of those are sold.

I've wanted to get the word out on these criminals (Randy Weber, Lori Weber, Arthur Weber, and Richard Dzierwa) for a long time--then I finally thought of Wikipedia! Caveat corporations! 00:18, 3 November 2007 (UTC)Rondamator00:18, 3 November 2007 (UTC)Rondamato

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN, AND MEANT, TO PROTECT PEOPLE FROM THE CONSUMERS DIGEST SCAM. ALL OPINIONS OF PARTICIPANTS IN THIS SCAM ARE SOLELY MY OWN AND ARE NOT MEANT TO CONVEY A CHARACTER ASSINATION. THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BY MYSELF AND A NON-CONTRACT EMPLOYEE OF CONSUMERS DIGEST. ALL CLAIMS ARE TRUE TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND BACKED UP BY PAPERWORK THAT WE LEGALLY COPIED. I HOPE THIS ARTICLE HELPS SOMEONE. IF YOU ARE A COMPANY HELPED BY THIS INFORMATION, PLEASE GIVE THE MONEY THAT YOU WOULD HAVE GIVEN MR WEBER TO A WORTHWHILE CHARITY.

External links

• Consumers Digest web site