Evan Schuman

U.S. consumers are roughly just as satisfied—or unsatisfied—with 2007 online merchants as they were in 2006, according to the latest e-commerce customer satisfaction survey from ForeSeeResults. Also roughly the same was the sequencing of the top—and bottom—players, with Netflix, Amazon, QVC, L.L. Bean and Apple faring the best and OfficeMax, CompUSA, SonyStyle, Overstock and Buy.com […]

Shoppers at Wal-Mart and other chains were unable to use their gift cards much of Dec. 26. While Wal-Mart apologized to customers, it laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of its technology partner. On Dec. 27, Wal-Mart issued an unattributed statement explaining that, “Early yesterday afternoon, we discovered that several retailers, including Wal-Mart, were […]

As the TJX case all but winds itself to a close, it’s not a bad time to look at everything we’ve learned and try and answer the holiday-themed IT security question: Does TJX deserve a lump of coal for the worst data breach in credit card history, affecting some 100 million credit cards? Regular readers […]

Dell will introduce in January a retail kiosk designed to change function throughout the day, eWEEK has learned. Similar kinds of kiosks are already in use by retailers, but the retailers have to define their purpose before deploying them. The new kiosks can be deployed at different spots in a retail location, perhaps at the […]

When Amazon unveiled its wireless Kindle device Nov. 19, expectations were high. Could the company that tamed the Web get its hand around wireless? Many of the initial media and analyst reviews of the device were less than favorable, pointing out things like an inability to flip through pages and buttons that obscured some viewing […]

In its annual survey of major retail return policies, ConsumerWorld made its list and checked it twice of return policies that are naughty and nice. Sports Authority, some Staples stores, KB Toys, The Limited and Express got on the naughty list because of their use of The Return Exchange’s database to limit customer returns. “Some […]

Retail IT leaders today are still struggling with RFID, and finding a way to salvage years of effort and eek out some provable profits. Staples Canada this week detailed some impressive results with reusable active-tag RFID, delivering an attractive 8-cent/chip cost, an extremely accurate read rate, a sharp reduction of out-of-stocks and even a huge […]

A one-store RFID trial that Staples ran this summer with reusable tags was successful enough to convince the retailer to expand it to four other stores in mid-February of 2008, said the retail chains IT executive in charge of the project. The initial Staples Canada trial was an attempt to see if the key argument […]

E-tailers are getting better at customer service and delivering usable Web sites, with Overstock, Lowe’s, Ralph Lauren and Kmart leading the way, according to a new report from The Customer Respect Group. In the customer service area, one of the things that has gotten the most favorable attention has been click-to-call, with some of the […]

TJX learned of its massive data breach on Oct 3, 2006, more than two months earlier than it told the government it first learned of the breach, according to an attorney representing one of the banks suing the retail chain. Getting to the bottom of these “he said/she said” exchanges—which is necessary to put these […]