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Tip of the Day: Don’t get ripped off by an alarm company
The scenario: A representative from a home-security company knocks on your door and offers you a free alarm system in exchange for displaying his company’s sign on your lawn. Swayed by the prospect of getting a security setup gratis, you sign a long-term monitoring contact and end up stuck with a shoddy installation and substandard equipment and service. Learn more about this type of scam—and, more important, how to avoid it—by reading the Scam Alert in the June 2008 issue of Consumer Reports.
05/12/2008
Inside Consumer Reports Test Labs: Kitchen-cabinet organizers
“Top drawer” took on a new meaning when Bob Karpel (right), a Tech/Appliance Program Leader for Consumer Reports, and his team put a wide array of pullout drawers, refuse/recycling containers, and rotating lazy Susans through a series of grueling tests as part of our August 2008 report on kitchen-cabinet organizers. At prices ranging from $20 to $220, these add-ons can be a cost-effective upgrade to kitchen cabinets. Here’s how we tested the gear: Ease of Installation One of the heavily weighted factors in our Ratings is ease of installation. Each of the 28 organizers we tested was installed in a typical kitchen cabinet. Those models with clear instructions and modest tool requirements (typically a screwdriver, ruler, and cordless drill) earned higher marks. In general, bottom-mounting slide-out drawers and refuse/recycling containers were easy to install, but those with side-mounting rails proved difficult as a one-person job. Three of the refuse/recycling containers mounted directly to a cabinet door, which entailed the extra step of shimming out the side-mounted rails with wood blocks. With the lazy Susans, centering and leveling the center posts and fitting all the needed large parts into a restricted cabinet also proved difficult. Note that if you have stone or composite counters, you’ll need to add a spacing block inside the cabinet to attach the lazy Susan’s top spindle mount. Pulling-Force and Spinning Usability Testing Bob added weight to each drawer component, then measured the force needed to pull it open. An alarming surprise: After durability testing, the stop mechanism on one low-priced unit worked only when its front section was heavily weighted; otherwise it just slid free of the rails. Bob loaded each lazy Susan with some common kitchen items and turned each unit a set number of times to test for smoothness, stability, and sagging. Considering the installation also, the least-expensive model was best overall. And one model had a nice feature: an internal spindle with special grooved threads to allow quick shelf-height adjustments. Durability Testing Bob’s “pièce de résistance” for this project was a “durability rig” (right) that used a pair of electric motors and a couple of crank arms to pull the drawer components in and out thousands of times; it also rotated the lazy Susans back and forth. Bob felt this setup would simulate five to 10 years of use, depending on a family’s size and lifestyle. The testing machine was set to push each drawer unit against its stop.
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