"Produkttests und die Stiftung Warentest – ein Lotteriespiel für die Branche?" (Product tests and Stiftung Warentest – a lottery for the trade?) was the title of a discussion between Dr. Holger Brackemann (Head of tests department at Stiftung Warentest – the leading German consumer safety group), Dirk Zedler (bicycle expert), Matthias Seidler (Managing Director of Derby Cycle GmbH), Horst Hahn-Klöckner (President of ADFC – the general German bicycle association) and moderator Gunnar Fehlau (news service bicycle) that took place on the second day.
The discussion quickly heated up and Zedler as well as Seidler zeroed in on the representative of Stiftung Warentest. Zedler blamed him of a lack of transparency with respect to test critera, as a consequence of which Brackemann invited him to attend the premises of Stiftung Warentest to get an idea of how they carried out the tests. Seidler criticised the unequal treatment of the market participants in the tests, i.e. a repeated issue in SAZbike articles (SAZbike of 2009-05-04). There was general agreement among the panel members about the necessity of professionalising the analysis of sources of defect. A documentation of loss patterns for this purpose is, however, not yet available. Stiftung Warentest intends to open up on the trade in view of improving the product. The question how to achieve this objective remained, however, unanswered.
