Consumers search for service

When it came to service, independent retailers earned high marks from shoppers for major and small appliances. Abt got top marks among shoppers of major appliances. Independent retailers had the highest marks from small-appliance shoppers at walk-in stores. All the other venues except Sears had low scores.

One reason scores were lower from respondents who'd bought small appliances might be the level of interaction with sales help; 78 percent of those shoppers had little or no contact. Gripes included trouble finding a salesperson to help, especially one who seemed knowledgeable or even interested.

More than 70 percent of shoppers for major appliances had significant contact with the sales help. Although few respondents complained about finding a salesperson to help, shoppers who bought major appliances at Best Buy complained more than those at any other retailer that they had trouble finding a knowledgeable salesperson.

Overall, almost 40 percent of online shoppers for major appliances had at least one complaint, including unexpectedly long waits for delivery and hard-to-find customer-support pages.

It helps to read the fine print. Lowe's guarantees that if you place an order online for pickup at a local store, your order will be ready in 20 minutes. But the website confusingly says that the guarantee "excludes customer wait time."

A Lowe's representative explained that the "excludes" phrase keeps a customer from, say, shopping for an hour before taking his online receipt to the counter and then complaining that the order was late. But if Lowe's is indeed late, we were told, the store manager can make it up to the customer on a case-by-case basis, perhaps with a gift card in an amount based on the price of the product.