Test-purchases
Test-Purchases is a popular Magazine of Belgian Association of the consumers.
Founded in 1957 by the advertizing executive Louis Darms, the review experienced an extraordinary development in the Golden Sixties while meeting this need that had the public to receive reliable and objective information products and services present on the market. War-horse of the magazine, the famous Master-purchase which leaves victorious the comparative study of the price and quality.
Test-purchases initiated several businesses like the test of the marks of gasoline S in 1962, the investigation in 1967-68 into the promoters of apartments, the mercury discovery in the moulds in 1973 or the scandal of the medical laboratories in 1979… In the Years 1980, Test-Purchases is directed more towards the legal defense of its members, like, as example, vis-a-vis certain contracts of adhesion to companies of electricity or water. The Echo of the August 24th 2006 announces that association and the real estate agents set up a standard contract to standardize the contractual relations between the real estate agents and their customers.
During the last decade, the Association of the Consumer-Test-Purchases, was tranformée in the first multinational association of consumers, called EUROCONSUMERS, which gathers today 1,5 million members through the Europe and the Latin America, thus proposing a globalisation interdependent of the consumers in answer to the economic globalisation.
The Master-purchase is the product or the service which represents the best quality-price ratio in the comparative tests of the magazine.
Test-purchases also publishes periodicals of information and councils financial: Hebdo budget, a newsletter weekly general practitioner mainly directed towards the actions, and Funds & SICAV, a monthly magazine devoted to the products of collective saving. By doing this, Test-Purchases is the only defense association of consumers in the world to integrate a dimension of financial councils. Test-purchases in particular took the active defense of its members at the time of the accounting scandal Lernout & Hauspie which shook Belgium with the turning of the millenium.
Sources
- Willy Van Ryckeghem, history of Test-Purchases Editions Root, Brussels, 2005