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Amazon offers fastest holiday purchase refunds, study says

by Christopher Elliott on December 28, 2011

The returning of gifts is almost as time-honored a tradition as Christmas itself.

Merchants are quick to take your cash, but they sure take their time with a refund — unless you’re doing business with Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, or LLBean.com. They were the three fastest online retailers, according to a new study by StellaService, issuing refunds within about four days.

The slowest? That would be Dell.com, which took two weeks, and Avon.com, which still hasn’t returned Stella’s purchase (naughty, naughty!).

Here’s the full list.

1. Amazon.com – 4.3 days
2. BestBuy.com- 4.7 days
3. LLBean.com- 4.7 days
4. Apple.com- 4.7 days
5. Williams-Sonoma.com- 4.7 days
6. HSN.com- 5.0 days
7. NewEgg.com- 5.3 days
8. Walmart.com- 6.0 days
9. HPShopping.com- 6.7 days
10. SonyStyle.com- 6.7 days
11. Gap.com-7.0 days
12. Overstock.com- 7.0 days
13. Kohls.com-7.7 days
14. Sears.com- 7.7 days
15. Nordstrom.com- 8.0 days
16. Macys.com- 8.7 days
17. Target.com- 9.7 days
18. Buy.com- 10.0 days
19. JCPenney.com- 10.0 days
20. VictoriasSecret.com- 12.0 days
21. ToysRUs.com- 12.3 days
22. QVC.com-13.0 days
23. Zappos.com- 13.3 days
24. Dell.com- 14.3 days
25. Avon.com- No refunds

To test the shipping speed of the Internet’s top 25 retailers, StellaService ordered and returned several products from each retailer to various parts of the country in the weeks leading up to December 25th, 2011. All shipments were done via UPS Ground Service.

How long have you been waiting for your refund?

(Photo: cheu kiecfu/Flickr)

Tagged as: Amazon.com, Gift, Refund

  • Courtney

    Amazon not only processed my refund within hours, but also didn’t ask me to actually return the item. No joke! They said I could keep it. That makes me want to put that refund toward a new Amazon purchase, probably an e-book, and maybe even join Amazon Prime. 

  • JulieB

    Hmm, Zappos is slow, but returns are free.

  • http://profiles.google.com/chazowen Charles Owen

    There are a lot more measures I would like to see than just the time to refund the money. I’ve returned a few things over the years to Amazon.com. As soon as you indicate a problem, they send out a pre-paid return label. As a contrast, we bought a can opener from Newegg.com. When it turned out to be broken, we found you have to pay the return shipping yourself, which was almost what the thing cost. Overstock.com once sent us the wrong item (completely wrong). They paid to return, okay, but shipped another wrong item, then said they could not send out the right item until we had returned the second wrong shipment. We finally gave up and returned it and got a refund much later. Needless to say, we keep buying lots of stuff from Amazon.com, but Newegg.com and Overstock.com have never gotten another purchase from us.

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