*Please note this transcription was created using AI transcription software, and may not be a fully accurate representation of the conversation recorded during this episode.
The evolution of Which?
Unknown Speaker 0:02
Hello and welcome. I'm Harry kind.
Unknown Speaker 0:04
I'm Grace Forelll.
Speaker 1 0:05
And this is get answers for living your best consumer life. When life gives you questions, which get answers.
Speaker 1 0:19
This week on the podcast, we're doing things a little bit differently. With Christmas fast approaching, we're going to snuggle up by the fire for a good old fashioned story, namely, how we hear it which came to be and how we've worked tirelessly to get answers for over 60 years. We'll return to normal service here on the podcast after Christmas. But today we'll hear how the organisation started life in a garage in East London in the 1950s. We'll meet the people who can share memories of those early years, and we'll discuss how we've evolved and adapted to the massively different consumer world of 2023. We should also say hello to our which money and wit shorts, podcast listeners who might be listening to us here on get answers for the first time. Welcome. Lucia. And Rob, send their love. First off, Grace, you've not quite been here since 1957. But you've covered a lot of topics. Is there anything that stands out as kind of peak which for you?
Speaker 2 1:11
Yeah, I was trying to think how long I had been here. And I think it will be around six years in January. So quite quite a long time. Not quite. Yeah. 5060 years. But yeah, so my peak, which moments I've got to say one of them, and I'm going to be deliberately vague here. And you'll understand why as I explain, but I once did undercover filming. Because we had reason to believe that there were bad practices going on by certain business. And so to prove that we went undercover filming, and I really felt like wow, this is a very grown up adult real life hardcore journalism situation. And it was, it was thrilling, but a bit scary.
Unknown Speaker 1:52
Did you have a character? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 1:55
Honestly, mental. And then also, I've got another one. Oh, when was it? About three years ago? We did an investigation into unsafe Christmas lights? Yes. Because you could pick up lots of sort of unbranded Christmas lights from online marketplaces. Just gonna say you probably still can. And we found that they had various sort of electrical faults. And so to demonstrate how unsafe they would be, we went to I think it was reading fire station, and they let us set fire to a Christmas tree in their sort of safe environment
Speaker 1 2:27
that I think that is classic, which really is, well, we're joined by someone who lives and breathes classic, which she's our recommended best buy when it comes to bosses. Its chief executive which Annabelle Holt Hello, Annabelle.
Unknown Speaker 2:42
Hello, how are you? Hello, Grace.
Unknown Speaker 2:43
Thank you for coming into the studio. So fantastic to have you here. Firstly, I mean, how would you describe the purpose of which
Speaker 3 2:51
it's the way I think about the purpose of which is just to make life simpler, fairer and safer for consumers? Simple
Speaker 1 2:58
as that. And before we go into the history, what have we been doing to fulfil that purpose? I mean, just in the last few weeks.
Speaker 3 3:05
So kind of two things, a really good way of describing watch, which does is with helping people navigate around Black Friday, and a winter well spent. That's one bit of what we do. And then the other thing that we really challenging on is on the right connect campaign, which is highlighting the unfair and unpredictable practice of price hikes and the contract for telecoms providers. I
Speaker 1 3:29
think if you said any of those words to the people who founded which they wouldn't understand a single one of them, it's just shows how up to date, we have to keep that way. That is fantastic. Before we get to proper questions, great. You've been looking through the history books. Before we go fully down memory lane, can you give us a kind of roll call of the people responsible for starting the organisation back in the day?
Speaker 2 3:51
Well, let's go back to 1957. It's only 12 years since the war ended, and that post war economy where people were still on rations, and didn't really have much at all. It's giving way to a more consumer focused society. So there's a bit more money going around and there are more products, appliances, cars, that kind of thing. There's more stuff available to buy in shops, but most people are still having to be very frugal and considered about how they spend their money. So a man called Michael Young. He's a research director for the Labour Party. He gets the idea rolling for a consumer advisory service, but it's rejected by President of the Board of Trade and future Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, but this doesn't deter Michael he joins forces with Dorothy Goodman. Now she's an American woman living with her husband, Raymond J. Goodman in London. In the States, they already had a consumer organisation called Consumer Reports. But then they moved to the UK and they realised that there was nothing like it on this side of the pond. So together, Dorothy and Michael created and published the very first which magazine from a convert The basement in Bethnal Green. And that magazine was edited by another co founder, Eilis Roberts.
Speaker 1 5:05
Now back in 2017, we travelled to America to speak to Dorothy herself, as we asked what Britain was like when she first arrived way back in the 1950s.
Speaker 4 5:20
Well, let's see, I arrived there in September of 55, to take up my graduate work at the University of London, in Woburn place in central London. I mean, you could get the necessary services that were hotels, there were beds and breakfast says it was not exactly booming with prosperity, because it was just the beginning of the consumer age.
Speaker 1 5:47
Well, earlier this year, Dorothy sadly passed away at 97. After a lifetime of hugely influential advocacy and educating. Our producer Rob was lucky enough to spend time with her daughter Harriet, who shared her memories of her mother's determination to start the first consumer organisation here in the UK.
Speaker 5 6:11
Starting with that story, mum and dad got married in December of 1953. And then they went about buying a house in Canterbury, so it had about six months first and the little bungalow. So it was kind of right, we need to redecorate. We need to instal central heating in the new house we're buying. We saw Where's Consumer Reports, which to her seemed like a completely obvious question. He assumed there would be something like that here. And he said, don't know what you mean doesn't exist. And she said, Well, we have to find it. Just
Unknown Speaker 6:40
love that attitude. It really shows what a driven woman Dorothy was.
Speaker 2 6:44
Yeah, absolutely can do, isn't it? It really is.
Speaker 1 6:47
But what happened next? How did we get from an idea to that first edition of which here's what Dorothy's daughter told us.
Speaker 5 6:54
From early 54, which is the time as I say post marriage, and they're sort of setting up house and they're trying to redecorate. There is a letter where she says, I'm going blue in the face, trying to find information about paints. So they're trying to repaint their home, and she just can't find she thinks it should. This is the sort of thing she thinks she would have been able to look up in Consumer Reports. And then there's several letters over the next several months to a year where she's talking about toying with the idea of founding a British CU, which he calls a Consumers Union. My brother came along this wonderful artefact, it's to her family, the Pericles family, her parents in Carmel, California, where they'd retired. And it arrived there on the 23rd of January 1956. My mother's birthday was the 15th of January, and she was turning 30. So she's thanking them for their Congratulations, dear all fourth decade. Yes, alas, sad but true. And then she goes on as our says Ray, my father, I'm now the present generation no longer the coming one depressingly laden with responsibilities. But nonetheless, I suppose a challenge exclamation point. Anyway, we celebrated the day by launching a British Consumers Union. That is, we had a meeting here of about 16 people seriously concerned with getting one going. And we plan to try to produce a mimeograph new sheet starting in about a month with each person or rather couple covering a pet peeve. We shall do central heating, this losses or to do diapers and electric razors, etc.
Speaker 6 8:30
It's amazing to get an insight into what things were like, as you say back at the very, very start. And from what I understand the testing, say for some of these products wasn't as rigorous and scientific as it as it is now.
Speaker 5 8:41
Exactly. For instance, they'd had an episode in their back garden, but this time, they're in canonbury and Owen villas, trying to test I thought it was washing powder, but I found a letter that says scouring powder, which makes more sense, it's fine. And they're trying to weigh it out in the slices, baby scales. And of course, it keeps flying around. They're trying to figure out how much scouring powder does it take to do a decent job on the kitchen sink or whatever it might be. And they thought, Oh, this is hopeless. We can't really say, you know, this amount is just going to equate. So what the strategy then shifted for that first mimeographed addition, which was let's collate all the information. There is information out there on different kinds of things, but it's in very different places, trade journals, presumably or just other particular interest groups, putting it into one mimeograph sheet. Put that as an out it's a prototype, which they presented at some parliamentary committee meetings. And then it was a whole other year before the first actual printed magazine you have a copy of upstairs on the wall wonderfully came out.
Unknown Speaker 9:40
What an absolutely incredible life.
Speaker 2 9:42
I love that vision of testing the scaring powder. It you know, it's crazy when you think of what they started with, because you think of how much stuff we buy and how many things which covers and it's like, how do you think of those first few products to test and I love that scaring powder was one of them. I
Speaker 1 10:00
guess it's easier when pretty much everything was being rationed at the time. Yes, true. And Annabelle, let me bring you back in here. You also met Harriet Goodman, when she visited a few months ago. What stood out to you about her mother?
Speaker 3 10:11
So I think it's really interesting this conversation, because I think in some ways, What's come over from her personality is actually the things that really relate to the values of which that grace, you're talking about that kind of make it happen, which is still one of our values. And then bravery is another one too, absolutely brave. You're saying 30 years old, she had started doing something in a country that wasn't her own, and really embodied that. And I think it's interesting later, when you talk about rigour that comes in later, again, one of our values, and those things are still very true of which today, well,
Speaker 1 10:42
before the break, let's hear more about that first ever which front cover. Here's Neil Fowler, editor of which magazine back in the 2010s. And how he described it to BBC is you and yours back in 2017.
Speaker 7 10:54
It's the first ever issue of which magazine was showing to beheaded rather centrist type ladies on the cover, looking through a short window at an array of kettles, it was a time when you could buy a kettle that could kill you. We look back at those times saying, if there's one thing which is achieved these days, you can't buy a kettle now that will kill you. Consumer goods are very much safer, and the consumer gets a much better deal. So we look on that cover. Although it looks slightly dated, we're looking at a great deal of pride. And I think it says something about which is achieved over the years,
Speaker 1 11:27
I was actually reading that first ever issue. And the quote here is fantastic on kettles a first review, the electric kettle is so handy and so portable, that it is used in many a home as the only electrical appliance besides light, just amazing. But what's also stands out is that there's a bewildering number of kettles on the market good, bad and indifferent, branded, and sometimes unbranded, but only a minority conforming to the current standards fully laid down by the British Standards Institution. What has changed in the past few years, and a decent chunk of that, I would say, is the cause of which really is amazing. Well from Killer kettles to our place in the world right now. We'll be back with more after this.
Speaker 1 12:18
Welcome back to the Get Answers podcast. Today with Christmas fast approaching, we're doing something a little bit different here on the podcast, hearing more about how which have been getting your answers for more than 60 years. Annabelle, we've heard her thing started for us back in 1957. Can we talk about some of the key standout moments in our history since then.
Speaker 3 12:38
So from Killer kettles, there have been a few moments which always come out as sort of standout moments in campaigns for which I think the first one I'd like to mention is lead free paint in toys. During the 1960s, the Consumers Association called for lead free painting toys and a demand that was finally met in 1967. The next one is around the Consumer Credit Act in 1974. Again, we were at the forefront of this campaign to make sure that people who lent money or provided credit actually had to state the true rate of interest, the APR, you now see, whenever you look at credit deals
Speaker 1 13:18
are hard. So we had a role in that person at the very end of a credit card advert saying APR variable.
Speaker 3 13:23
Absolutely, absolutely. And then the other one, which I think is totally amazing, is in 1983. Only in 1983, did it become mandatory to wear a seatbelt in the front of your car. And the rear passengers followed in 1987. Again, which campaign for this introduction and is of course saved 1000s of lives. It
Speaker 1 13:44
is incredible to think I think there's a so many parts of that, that consumers now we take for granted. And we just assume it was always there. And it just magically appeared somehow. But actually it was fought for, isn't it? Yeah.
Speaker 2 13:57
Well, it makes me think about our work that we've done recently with the online safety bill, and how I think in years to come, we'll probably have similar conversations where we'll say I mean, I can't believe that these tech corporations weren't more responsible for what was happening on their platforms. And people will probably take it for granted. But if it wasn't for all the campaigning, we've worked that we've done, you know, who knows where we'd
Speaker 1 14:19
be? Yeah, where was the time when you had lead in toys and scam ads on Facebook? And now, you know, hopefully moving away from the latter. Yeah. I mean, on the present day, Annabelle, how would you describe our role now? Because I mean, a lot of people, especially when you talk to them, say what do you do say, Oh, we're which they sell you the product review people. That's understandable because we do so much of that. But there's so much more that we do, isn't there? Absolutely.
Speaker 3 14:46
I mean, there is so much more to us than product reviews is a it's an important part we do it's so much more. I guess how I like to think about it is we are the home of everyday advice for consumers might be that product review but it also might be free advice about how to manage your money during the cost of living crisis. Indeed, we've had 21 million unique views on our cost of living hub in the last 18 months, or indeed, our scams newsletter, we've got half a million people signed up now to protect themselves from scams. But Alongside this, we also continue to campaign on key issues as that kind of voice for consumers. And where we should challenge businesses and policymakers just to make things safer online. And we press for new laws just you've been saying grace, making reimbursement mandatory for scam victims, banning paid for scam adverts, none of this would have happened without which is
Speaker 1 15:42
incredible to think that we are still going and with such a similar core principles, a corporate sales barely changed, but the world around us has, which then brings us on to the future. You know, what does which look like 1020 30 years time?
Speaker 3 15:58
Yeah, so So much has changed. But that sense of simpler, fairer and safer, I think is very true and will continue to be true. And I sort of sit here I think actually, as the world becomes much more digital and the influence of new technologies like generative AI, which can have a fundamental change and impact on our lives, that we will still continue to need to be there. The issues might be slightly different. It might be as I say, more digital, it might be the move towards net zero and the consumer choices that will need to be made as part of that. So I think we will continue to be need to be here to provide advice for consumers. It might be in slightly different formats. If we even think of a few years back social media wasn't there. We'll continue to find it a new format. It might be like we are today more audio. It might be more video, but it will still be advice for consumers
Unknown Speaker:both good to hear it Annabelle. It's been fantastic to have you on the show. Thank you for dropping by.
Speaker 3 16:54
So thank you, Grace. Thank you Harry loved being on the show.
Unknown Speaker:Really nice to have Annabelle in the studio.
Speaker 2 17:03
Yeah, you know, it's like making me feel really proud to work at which without getting too sloppy.
Speaker 1 17:08
Yeah, I mean, it's a British institution, it is part of the fabric. But also it is still like being a pain thorn in the side to the people who make people's lives more difficult than they need to be just thinking about, like, starting with LED paint as pretty much our first kind of campaign where we were not just testing things, but asking for things to change. But you know, now things like supermarkets like cost of living crisis, we've been doing so much campaigning on affordable food and making sure prices are low in all supermarkets and not just the larger ones. I think that's the kind of thing that you would think Michael Young and Dorothy Goodman would probably have reckoned with us doing if you explained the situation right now. Yes, it's perfectly it's very, very rich.
Speaker 2 17:57
Yeah, I think since the cost of living crisis began, I've really felt the impact that we are having through the work that we do. I mean, we really made our focus, you know, rather than helping people to spend more wisely, it was how to save money, even just shaving off, you know, a few pence a few quid here and there, it's been really the focus of what we've been doing. And I know that it's just been helping so many people. Yeah, and
Speaker 1 18:22
some of our campaigns, you know, access to cash. And the freedom to pay with cash was such a big campaign for us, we haven't really actually made legislation. And that's been so important for people who have mobility and accessibility issues in places where they don't want to have to rely on a pin card reader that you can't see, or having to ask someone else to go and get cash from a nearby town for you. It's diversifying the consumer market and making sure that every kind of consumer has access to everyday advice. And I think it's about making it simpler, fairer and safer for all consumers. That means different things for different people, but which is there for all of them. Well, that's it for this episode. And indeed this year of our new fortnightly, Get Answers podcast, the new year is just around the corner. And we'd like you to get in touch with suggestions for the kinds of things you'd like to get answers on. So send us an email at podcast at which Dakota uk or give us a shout out on our social channels at which UK
Speaker 2 19:29
and if you could give us a rating and a slash or a review that would be amazing. Doing that really helps us reach more people. And if you want to support the witch cause we've got lots of different membership options at different price points. And obviously this gets you access to all of our locked up advice and test results
Speaker 1 19:46
really important. If you've got any last minute Christmas presents you need to buy. Grace, what are we up to after Christmas?
Speaker 2 19:52
Well, we're taking a short break over Christmas and New Year and we'll be back with a brand new episode on Monday the eighth of January as we Explore the best short and long haul destinations to pick your 2024 holidays. We're all going to need a bit of holiday escapism once Christmas is over and we've got the fabulous Chelsea Dickinson aka cheap holiday expert in the studio. If there's anything you'd like to ask her or us do, drop them in an email or give us a shout on social. We do read every single message.
Speaker 1 20:21
Brilliant. Well, if you want more podcasts to listen to before then I highly recommend the which money podcast for your personal finances. But also we've got the best stories from which magazine narrated for you over on which shorts, just search wherever you're listening to this. Today's get answered podcast was presented by me how you kind alongside Grace Pharrell produced and recorded by Robert Lee Jones and edited by Eric Bria and thanks again to our wonderful guest, which chief exec Annabel Holt, and of course, Harriet Goodman. We'll see you next time. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Goodbye. Bye