all my time thinking about how to evaluate things, except that I was evaluating public services." He thought "a lot of the same ideas would apply" to putting out a magazine similar to Consumer Reports, which has been publishing for 61 years. As his HEW staffers did their work, he said, they were "also in the meantime training me about evaluation methods, so I was spending. In the early 1970s, he was director of research and evaluation planning at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. But before becoming a publisher and consumer advocate, that's exactly where he was - working for the federal government. Tanned and tie-less, with the physique of a regular bicyclist, Krughoff looks as if he would be more at home at the helm of a sailboat than behind a government desk. build as many checks as possible in the system," Krughoff said, "but it's always possible to make mistakes." has made similar accusations concerning its Trooper and Acura SLX models. said Consumers Union had faked tests to produce rollovers in the 1988 Suzuki Samurai. Krughoff believes that rating services instead of products helps Checkbook to avoid the type of controversy that has surrounded Consumer Reports' study of sport utility vehicles, in which the magazine was accused of rigging the trucks to flip over easily. When checking out hospital emergency rooms, Krughoff said he "drove around to fire departments and talked to ambulance squads and asked them to rate the emergency departments that they visited." "In our very first issue, when we were evaluating nursing homes," Krughoff recalled, "we surveyed members of the clergy, who regularly visit patients in these nursing homes, and asked them what do you think,' because they had a basis for comparison. without their permission."Īnd sometimes, it means taking unorthodox measures. "So it means that sometimes you're really just seizing on table scraps of data - anything that you can get your hands on. "We don't want to be dependent on any firm we're evaluating, so we have to do it at arm's length, and we have to know that we can do it whether they want to play ball or not," Krughoff said. Information for the surveys - which can cost from $1,000 to $50,000 - is culled from reader and customer surveys, firsthand testing and public records. The staff of about 30 also publishes an annual restaurant guide and Checkbook Bargains, a guide to the area's best prices for electronic equipment, appliances, watches, sporting goods, tools and many other products. Newsstand sales also contributed to revenue that approached $2 million last year. It is supported almost entirely by nearly 52,000 subscribers (who pay $30 each) and their separate donations, which Krughoff said topped $300,000 from District area readers last year. Over the years, Giant and other companies have expressed dissatisfaction to Krughoff about the results of Checkbook surveys, but none has filed a formal complaint with any regulatory agency.Ĭheckbook is published twice a year by the Center for the Study of Services, a Washington nonprofit business of which Krughoff is president. "They provide an invaluable service not only to their subscribers but also to all other consumers," who "can take advantage of a more competitive, consumer-friendly marketplace as a result of Checkbook's activities," he said. "By shopping with specials, consumers can realize true savings."īut the item-by-item comparisons are "pre-purchase information" that shoppers need, said Stephen Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America. "Limited comparisons such as the information contained in Checkbook are of little value," said Barry Scher, Giant's vice president for public affairs, who disputed the report's conclusion. It also includes an item-by-item price comparison of local grocery chains that concludes shoppers can save more than $900 a year by choosing Shoppers Food Warehouse over Giant or Safeway - and illustrates the feelings Checkbook can evoke among its subjects and subscribers. The current issue is packed with appraisals of veterinarians, pest control firms and more than 500 auto repair businesses. But his second flash of inspiration sprang to life as Washington Consumers' Checkbook, a magazine that for more than two decades has rated the services and cost-competitiveness of area businesses from car dealers to dentists to funeral homes. Krughoff didn't return a fourth time, and his relationship with the repair shop died that day. Then a second thought popped into his head: "There just ought to be a Consumer Reports for services." Twenty-five years ago, as Robert Krughoff drove out of a Prince George's County auto repair shop for the third time, it occurred to him "within a mile," he says, "that I'd be going back for a fourth time."
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