Customer service a dirty word for most e-tailers

The survey, carried out by international management consultancy Plaut, found that only 15 per cent of sites offered a level of service that would be acceptable on the high street.

Faults ranged from not refunding money to it being impossible to cancel orders online. Horror stories included: the computer maker that could be contacted neither by phone nor email, despite putting customers on hold for more than 90 minutes the white goods firm that delivered goods 21 days after cancellation was confirmed the bookshop that refunded money after goods were returned, but did not refund the VAT, providing no explanation the clothes seller that charged for goods confirmed as cancelled the toy shop that lost the order and could not accept returns by post, suggesting they be taken back to the nearest store.

"This study shows that many ecommerce sites are only paying lip-service to customer service," said report author Jason Goodwin, head of CRM at Plaut. "Companies need to have a single view of the customer. Whatever they saved by not integrating their back office operations will be more than wasted in the time and effort they will spend repairing the omission - not to mention the loss of customers."

A Consumer Association spokesman said: "E-tailers must be aware that the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 came into effect at the end of October. Key features are: that the consumer must be given clear information about the goods or services offered the consumer must be sent confirmation after ordering that there is a cooling-off period of seven working days to cancel the transaction."

The Plaut e-Return report lists 13 major ineptitudes encountered in the survey, including technical ones of: not testing the website for all types of browsers customer reference numbers used to track orders online being different in offline records it being impossible to cancel orders via the website.

Goodwin said that some of the motivation for the survey came from experiences of his and Plaut's UK CEO Karl Thurston of ordering online, but added that they had been looking at the area already.

He said: "I'll continue to buy things online, but only things that I'm sure I want. I certainly don't want to face the problems of trying to return CDs or socks on 26 December."

The companies found to have flawless purchase, delivery and returns processes were Appliance Direct, Bigsave.com, Country Bookshop, Marks & Spencer and Virgin Wines.