UK e-tailers slammed for shoddy online customer service

Some of Britain's largest retailers, including Argos, Boots and JJB Sports, have been slammed for providing poor online customer service.

In a report released this morning, management consultants Shelley Taylor & Associates found that many items ordered from the retailers' Web sites went missing, were difficult to return or included hidden extra costs.

The survey - called Return to Sender - compared the order fulfilment of online stores in the US and UK. According to researchers, UK sites fall way behind their US counterparts, with American stores five times more likely to offer shipping service options, three time more likely to provide live order tracking and twice as likely to send email order shipment confirmations as their UK counterparts.

Under the heading 'Horror Stories', the report's authors described how an order placed on the Boots Web site on 3 March was declared missing two weeks later - even though they had received an email confirmation from the company. Boots also promised that a second online order would be delivered within five working days - but it never turned up.

UK IT supplier Elonex was charged £15 for shipping a blank recordable CD which cost £1.50.

According to the research outfit's founder, Shelley Taylor, the report shows there are still huge problems in completing online orders. She said: "Part of the problem is a legacy issue - companies don't have integrated back office systems. But also firms aren't using their retailing minds to develop a Web site - they're turning the challenge over to graphic designers instead."

The most surprising result of the research, according to Taylor, is that established retailers fall behind dot-com start-ups in terms of order fulfilment.

Music specialist HMV and video retailer Blackstar came top of the list in the UK, with Amazon.com ranking best overall for order fulfilment.

Boots and Argos were unable to comment.