'Best ever Christmas' tempered by e-tail fears

NEWS Despite predictions that this could be the biggest ever Christmas for e-tailers, the online retail sector could lose as much as $13.5bn as consumers are turned away by bad customer services. Research house Datamonitor has found that 69.4 per cent of online transactions this year were abandoned. Those customers who bailed out found the processing speed of purchases too long. They were also unhappy with shipping costs and suffered the usual security fears. Analysts from Datamonitor said that in particular e-tailers need to move on from concentrating on investments in infrastructure and need to start thinking more about customer satisfaction. But generally things are looking up. Last week, Nielsen NetRatings showed that in one week up to 11 November, online purchases were up 14 per cent. Even more impressive, the toys and games market witnessed a leap of 66 per cent on the previous week.