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Can't do it without you
Every year we mail out our Annual Questionnaire. It may already have landed in your mailbox, or it will in the coming weeks. (For some of you, it's your e-mailbox, but more on that in a minute.) Problem is, the "AQ," as we call it, usually arrives in an avalanche of mail. I find it exasperating to weed through that pile every day, and I imagine you do, too. But when you find the blue and white Consumer Reports envelope, lots of you--400,000 last year--take the time to fill it out, telling us about the products and services you own or use. We know it can take 30 minutes to an hour or so, depending on how many questions you choose to answer. And we do ask a lot of questions. This year, for example, on one of the six versions of the AQ that we send out, there are 36 questions on auto insurance alone. Why 36? Because our report on insurance must be able to tell you what you need to know to make a smart choice, such as which companies had discourteous agents and how long it took to get total payment after you filed a claim. We'll have plenty to say, since each one of you will have had plenty to tell us: Just think of the survey as an information cooperative, with everyone adding a piece of experience. That's how we've thought about it, right from the start. The first Consumers Union survey, in 1937, was sent in mimeographed form to a few hundred subscribers. We asked them to help us develop a final questionnaire to be sent to all our members. Some questions haven't changed much since that draft, though the type of kitchen ranges on that first list included coal burners and the refrigerator options included ice and gas. Last year 200,000 subscribers sent their answers electronically in response to our first full-scale online version of the survey. Turns out, given your enthusiastic response, an electronic AQ is easier to do. This year, more than a million subscribers who've sent us their e-mail addresses will get the electronic version. If you're a print subscriber who didn't receive the electronic version this year and would like to next year, register here. We guarantee your e-mail address will not be sold to, given to, or swapped with any third party. However you receive the survey, please do fill it in and mail it back to us as soon as possible. The faster we can compile the information, the faster we can get back to you and all the other consumers out there with hard data on which icemakers didn't freeze and which computers did. Thanks.
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