Sure, the holidays are great — unless you happen to be hosting about five more people than you originally anticipated, the turkey gets dry and the mall runs out of the perfect gift you'd been eyeing for your best friend. Take a deep breath (and a generous sip of eggnog) — we've got ten items that are guaranteed to loosen your white-knuckled grip on that roll of wrapping paper you're clutching.

The Consumer Reports staff of researchers, field experts, physicians, and lab scientists work to find the hidden truth within virtually every product and service you want to buy. Through unbiased reviews, ratings, and valuable input from subscribers, Consumer Reports helps you find the best and get the most out of everything you buy and use.

Ordering a gin and tonic at The Ritz-Carlton, Macau is quite the affair. First, Giuseppe Carillo rolls the Five-Star hotel’s heaving gin trolley over to your group. Then...

President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and his pronouncements about tariffs have been rocking the stock market and investors. Now...

Influencers are far from losing marketing power. According to the State of Influencer Marketing 2019 report, 320 platforms and influencer marketing agencies have been created since May of 2018, and brands are still seeing...

Right now, there’s a notable sales tax trend sweeping through states. And if your company hasn’t been impacted yet, it will be soon. States are changing their tune on who can pay sales tax on purchases. Many have passed laws allowing...

To cut costs whenever and wherever possible, your finance staffers must be able to recognize purchases that qualify for sales and use tax exemptions. But that’s easier said than done.   Even B.J. Pritchett, president of Pritchett Sales & Use Tax Consulting, admits that...

The percentage of total retail sales attributed to ecommerce has been growing with each passing quarter for years. That healthy market is good news, but...

All in all, 2018 was a happy holiday for retailers across the US. According to Mastercard SpendingPulse, retail spending from November 1 through December 24 increased 5% from 2017, its best growth in six years. Online shopping in particular increased...

Meet Beverly. She's worked at UPS for 10 years. She has one to two kids and is earning $40,000 to $50,000 per year. She has limited or no access to credit and can't handle an unexpected expense of more than $500. And her fridge just broke...

Back in March, eBay offered a lifeline to the small town brick-and-mortar shops that have suffered as retail sales have shifted online. The company said it would target about 100 small businesses in towns like Akron, Ohio, and Lansing, Michigan, and teach them how to sell online via a year-long program dubbed Retail Revival...

Warby Parker has always had its eyes on the future. Yet when the eyeglass company first launched in 2010, naysayers thought its direct-to-consumer model eschewing traditional retail channels seemed, well, shortsighted. "We got a lot of advice from people that said...

The outlines of the future of the auto industry are becoming clearer as recent news developments underscore determinative trends that finally are reaching critical mass. These trends include...

What started off as a strong holiday shopping season ended with a whimper, as consumers, rattled by a trade war and a government shutdown, tightened their belts. The Commerce Department said...

Not long ago -- three months to be exact -- Amazon's giant HQ2 project was considered a national prize. The largest e-commerce company in the world had planned to create a second major campus outside its Seattle mothership as it worked toward even more expansion. City leaders across the country clamored for the attention of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in their quest to land the $5 billion development and its promise of 50,000 high-paying jobs. Then...

MORE STAYING POWER. MORE SAVING POWER The job of a heat exchanger is to capture heat from burning gas and transfer it to your pool’s water—the more efficiently, the better. The combination of operating heat and pool water chemistry is very tough on exchangers, leading to corrosion and failure. That’s why we made the ETi 400 High-Efficiency Heater’s direct-fire heat exchanger from pure titanium. It provides a long life even under extreme conditions and is the most corrosion-resistant material in the industry. The ETi heater has the highest efficiency in its class and is the longest lasting heat exchanger ever built, with ASME-certified construction.

Electric auto brand Tesla Inc. said it signed an agreement Wednesday to secure land in Shanghai for its first factory outside the United States, pushing ahead with development despite mounting U.S.-Chinese trade tensions. Tesla, based on Palo Alto, California, announced plans for the Shanghai factory in July after the Chinese government said it would end restrictions on full foreign ownership of electric vehicle makers to speed up industry development. Those plans have...