STELLAservice, an independent provider of customer-service ratings, graded 100 Internet retailers on how long customers had to wait on the telephone and how long it took to get an email response.
SierraTradingPost.com had the shortest call hold time at six minutes. Barnes and Noble made callers wait the longest with an average hold time of over eight minutes.
In the case of emails, OfficeDepot.com was the best by returning emails within an average of 48 minutes.
The worst was Crate and Barrel. Customers had to wait nearly four days to get a response via email.
