Buy Online, Pick Up in Store Not Simple, at Least this Christmas

Dec. 22, 2015—Retailers this holiday season have been aggressively trumpeting click-and-collect shopping, a relatively new hybrid of digital and old-school buying that allows time-starved customers to place an order online and pick it up within hours at a counter in a store. But so far, many shoppers are finding it to be a big headache.

Fully 60 percent of such orders placed on Cyber Monday ran into problems, one study found. The wrong items were received or orders were cancelled because the product was no longer in stock. Sometimes there was no notification an order was ready.

Shoppers in droves have taken to social media to complain about long waits at the service counter and other issues, an outcry that could get louder as a crush of gift-buying procrastinators begin descending on store counters in the final days before Christmas.

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