Consumer Reports is not an island unto itself

My newest interest: our Black & Decker BL600B blender. With 12 speeds, a separate ice-crusher button, and an "easy clean" function, it blends up smoothies with no problem and cleans up in no time.

We had been on the blender hunt for a while and our first stop, as always, was Consumer Reports. Their top recommendation was a Braun blender. The price was right, and I set out to find it.

Imagine my dismay, however, when I went to Amazon and saw a slew of bad reviews. This Braun blender had a horrible track record of breaking after a few months of use. Come to find out that CR had retracted its recommendation and revamped its blender test to include durability.

So we re-read the Consumer Reports ratings and decided on the B&D blender. We found it was in stock at our local BestBuy and we bought it the next day. It has worked like a charm.

So the moral of this story is: don't rely on just one source when you're researching a product. In addition to Consumer Reports, here are some other sites that give reviews/ratings/consumer information: epinions.com, amazon.com, cnet.com, and bbb.com. To borrow the old YellowPages tag: let your fingers do the walking before you open your wallet.