Via the website Consumerist.com, Consumer Reports is currently offering a free 30-day trial subscription to ConsumerReports.org. From The Consumerist website:

Since we’re owned by Consumer Reports, we’re able to exclusively offer you a free 30-day trial subscription to ConsumerReports.org. Yep, it’s free. Just sign up. You’ll have to type in your credit card number. But it won’t be charged until after the 30-day period. And don’t worry: We’ll e-mail you a reminder before the 30 day period ends. Plus-you can cancel at any time for a prorated refund. That’s ConsumerReports.org for a month-on us!

That seems like a pretty good deal to us. We like “free” and we like Consumer Reports. And it’s nice to know that they will send you an email reminder before they charge your card and will prorate your subscription if you cancel after the trial period ends.

And if you want to make sure you cancel in time (assuming you don’t want to fork over the $26 annual fee for a subscription — still a pretty good value, we think), in addition to relying on their reminder email, we suggest setting up a reminder using your email service (e.g., Yahoo lets you set up a calendar appointment and then set automated email reminders as the date/time approaches).

Or, if you prefer, you can have a text message sent to your phone reminding you to cancel the subscription by using a service like textreminders.net. And if you want to set up a phone call reminder, you can try getmooh.com (the “mooh” stands for “me out of here” — they promote the service as a way to get out of boring meetings or get-togethers, but you can also use it to remind yourself of something).

If you’re not familiar with Consumer Reports, (though we’re guessing most people have heard of them and/or know about their service), they are a non-profit organization that tests and evaluates a wide range of products and provides easy-to-read reports and charts that help you compare and contrast and get a better sense of a product’s overall quality, strengths, and weaknesses before you buy. Here’s the mission of the publisher of Consumer Reports:

Consumers Union [publisher of Consumer Reports] is an expert, independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and to empower consumers to protect themselves. The organization was founded in 1936 when advertising first flooded the mass media. Consumers lacked a reliable source of information they could depend on to help them distinguish hype from fact and good products from bad ones. Since then CU has filled that vacuum with a broad range of consumer information. To maintain its independence and impartiality, CU accepts no outside advertising and no free samples and employs several hundred mystery shoppers and technical experts to buy and test the products it evaluates.

To read all about Consumer Reports, including how they test, click here.

To take advantage of the free 30-day trial to Consumer Reports online, click here.