Buyer Aware by Marta L. Tellado

Buyer Aware
by Marta L. Tellado

ISBN-13: 9781541768574
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Released: September 20th 2022

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
The rules that have protected consumers for decades are failing. Companies are spying on us. Many of the products we once trusted are dangerous and failing at alarming rates. Whether we are buying a crib, a small appliance, an iPhone app, or shopping for car insurance, it's become harder than ever to know whether the choices we make in the marketplace are putting us at risk-either from physical harm or the abuse of our personal data by hackers or corporations.

Marta L. Tellado, the president and CEO of Consumer Reports, has been an advocate for consumers for decades. In Buyer Aware, Tellado shows you the steps you can take to protect yourself from predatory business practices, and how to exert your inherent power as a consumer to spur politicians and businesses to clean up their act. Only then can we ensure that we have an economy that is fair, safe, and transparent for all, and puts consumers first.


My Review:
According to this author, "user generated reviews"--like this one--are generally untrustworthy, especially if they're 5 star reviews. Or if they're from social influencers who got the product for free. The only really trustworthy reviews are from Consumer Reports, for which the author works, and she highly promotes them. Either this is hypocrisy (as book reviewers have been asked to review her book which is given to them for free) or it's really stupid to insult the very people who are going to be the first ones reviewing your book. Just saying.

I've only read about a third of the book and won't be finishing it. So far, she has described some things that she doesn't like about the internet that people should be aware of, though nothing really new to me so far. She basically said to go the the Consumer Reports site for more information on how to prevent companies from tracking you to gather and sale your data, and I assume that she will point the reader there for solutions in future chapters, too.

Why have I stopped reading when I usually finish even the books I hate? Because she's ranting about how people are manipulated toward their own bias and how horrible misinformation is while proving with her examples that she's been manipulated toward her bias and hasn't noticed. If you're conservative, she'll insult you in some fashion, like specifically targeting Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson (from Fox News) and saying they don't report news but rather provide manipulative fiction.

She also spread misinformation while complaining about how there's so much misinformation. One example is that she stated as fact that the COVID vaccines are safe and it's misinformation to say that they can cause death. Yet the CDC's own Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (for data up to June 17, 2022) indicates that 29,031 deaths have been reported from the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, with 16% occurring within 24 hours of vaccination, 20% occurring within 48 hours of vaccination and 59% occurring in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated. If she can't even correctly identify what is true and what is propaganda, why should I trust her discernment about anything else in this book?


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.