We are now three days into the official Holiday Returns & Exchanges Season, and while those shoppers who paid a little more — and put on pants — to go shopping at bricks-and-mortar stores, it’s usually just a matter of waiting in line to get your refund. But for gift-givers who did their buying online this year, that wait for a refund could be anywhere from a few days to several weeks.

The folks at STELLAservice looked at the turnaround time at 25 of the largest online retailers for gift-buying in the weeks leading up to Christmas to see how long each site took to process a standard refund.

After ordering and returning a handful of items from each site, STELLAservice found that Amazon’s average 4.3 days to process a refund was the fastest.

And while BestBuy.com may have screwed over a lot of customers by waiting weeks to tell back-ordered customers that their items would not be delivered as promised, the survey did find that the retailer’s 4.7 day average to get out a refund was enough to put it in a tie for second place with LLBean.com. Of course, that company has a much, much more generous return and refund policy.

On the bottom end of the list, Dell.com customers waited 14.3 days on average for their refunds while those who bought from Avon’s website, well… they are still waiting.

Also of note at the bottom of that list is Zappos.com, which was the fastest site in STELLAservice’s recent ranking of delivery times, was very near the back of the pack with a 13.3 day average for processing a refund.

Time for a Return? You May Have Less Time Than You Think [STELLAservice.com]

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