Category: Consumer Comments

Pharmaceutical retail-price survey shows consumers ways to save A survey in May 2003 comparing prices charged in the same towns by a sample of different pharmacies, ranging from independently owned businesses to large retail and discount chains to Internet providers, showed significant price differences. The states surveyed included Virginia, Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Illinois, Arizona, Colorado, […]

Steel protection hurts consumers The U.S. lost another round at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against its policy to protect the U.S. steel industry from competition. In an appellate body decision, the WTO agreed again with the complaint by seven countries and the European Union that U.S restrictions on steel imports, including high tariffs, violate […]

Media highlights The following media mentions were omitted in the last edition of Consumer Comments: September 3 – James Plummer was quoted by Cybercast News on red-light camera safety issues. November – Wired News wrote up NCC’s Privacy Villain of the Week. (A regular feature by James Plummer.) November 16 – Cybercast News Service carried […]

Smith addresses Calorie Control Council on consumer activism In her presentation on “Consumer Activists: Modus Operandi” to the Calorie Control Council’s Annual Meeting and Educational Symposium on November 8 in Florida, Frances Smith explained that there are two polar views of how to address consumer welfare, animated by two opposite views of representing consumers: 1) […]

Smith speaks on precautionary principle to toxicologists Executive Director Frances B. Smith addressed the attendees of a conference organized by the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology on June 20, 2002. In her remarks about the so-called “Precautionary Principle” Smith outlined the problems that have arisen with the application of that principle in public […]

CPSC and GE — A re-recall remedy – Brief Article Carol Dawson The Consumer Product Safety Commission has finally prevailed in the effort to force General Electric to amend its recall of GE and Hotpoint Dishwashers built between 1983 and 1989. The appliances were recalled because of an alleged fire hazard related to a heat/air […]

Clothes-washer rule hangs consumers out to dry – Brief Article Plummer James Consumer Alert was among those giving the Department of Energy (DOE) negative feedback on proposed clothes washer rules that promise to drive up the cost of washing machines for every consumer. The regulations will force many standard top-loading washing machines out of the […]