Building a Better World, Together
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By Consumer Reports
CR Safety Update
In early 2021, CR lab tests found a problem with a smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) detector model made by Universal Security Instruments: The alarm could be set off too late or not at all when exposed to CO. We shared the results with the company and the Consumer Product Safety Commission at the time, and designated the model a Don’t Buy: Performance Problem. In late March 2022, the company recalled this and another detector model, and offered to replace them free of charge. Learn more at: "Universal Security Instruments Recalls About 8,000 Smoke & CO Detectors Due to Failure to Alarm at Dangerous CO Levels".
Making Online Markets Fairer
To be fair and effective, a marketplace must give all buyers and sellers, products and services, information and ideas an equal opportunity to thrive. But that’s not always the case in the digital world, where a few corporate behemoths increasingly dominate the exchange of goods, services, and information.
In fact, consumers are deeply troubled by current market conditions: Roughly 3 out of 4 Americans worry about the power wielded by the biggest tech companies, according to a 2020 nationally representative CR survey of 3,219 U.S. adults.
That’s why CR is advocating for two bills that would limit the companies’ power, introduce more competition and consumer choice, and lower prices. One is the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would prevent tech platforms from giving preference to their own products and services over those of competitors. Google couldn’t make its own airline flight search results more prominent than Kayak’s, for example.
The other is the Open App Markets Act, which, among other things, would make it easier to switch between Apple and Android phones, and to choose default apps for smartphone functions such as email, web search, and “smart” voice assistants.
Both bills have passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with large, bipartisan majorities. To urge full passage, CR helped organize an effort by more than 100 groups and small companies to drum up support. CR alone has generated more than 25,000 consumer messages; you can still add your voice at "Take back your online power from Big Tech!"
Relief for Student Debt
What’s at stake: Two programs designed to make higher education more affordable have largely failed their intended beneficiaries. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which promises to erase any remaining student debt for borrowers who work in qualifying public-service and not-for-profit jobs after 10 years of payments, turned down 99 percent of those who applied. And as of September 2019, only 32 of some 4.4 million student borrowers who’d been repaying loans for 20-plus years had received forgiveness that had been promised by Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans.
Both programs—which long predate the current debate over blanket student loan cancellation—have been plagued by overly complicated rules and mismanagement on the part of the Department of Education and loan servicers.
How CR has your back: CR has been pushing to make sure these borrowers get the relief they’d been promised—and had earned—for years. In addition to working with regulators directly, we generated over 25,000 public comments in September 2021 urging the Department of Education to fix the PSLF program. That same month, our advocates held a well-attended webinar drawing attention to the problem.
In October 2021 the department expanded eligibility for the PSLF, and in April it made similar fixes to the IDR loan cancellation program. Tens of thousands of student loans will be forgiven, and millions more are closer to it, as a result.
What you can do: Learn more about the new policies, and how to take advantage of the programs, by reading our report: "Some Student Borrowers Finally Starting to See Real Relief."
Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in the July 2022 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.
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Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright © 2022, Consumer Reports, Inc.
