Based on the sales figures, consumers are increasingly content to turn to the web to get their holiday shopping done. 【A1】________by survey data and heaping evidence, however, we’re increasingly dissatisfied with online shopping in general. By most accounts, the Christmas we have just passed was a terrific holiday 【A2】________for e-commerce. Online sales on Cyber Monday increased 【A3】________17% over last year, and e-retail sales shot up even more sharply on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Overall, e-commerce purchases were up around 15% for the season, and, according to comScore, at least 12 days during the season 【A4】________ the $1 billion mark for online sales.

What’s more, December 25 may have come and gone, but we’re still in the thick of the holiday shopping season, thanks to post-Christmas and post-New Year’s sales—and especially thanks to the increased popularity of gift cards. Yet as more consumers turn to online shopping before and after the holidays, more critics are 【A5】________ their dissatisfaction with e-retail. The biggest argument in favor of online shopping is that it eliminates the 【A6】________ of having to go to a store, but still, online shopping is hardly without troubles. Perhaps the most public critique of online shopping 【A7】________ in a New York Times op-ed just before Christmas. In it, the author wrote of her experience purchasing and shipping holiday gifts. The piece’s title—”The Hell of Online Shopping”—reveals that the experience didn’t 【A8】________ so well. Among the problems: purchased items were shipped to the 【A9】________ people; presents that were supposed to be gift-wrapped never were; cards alerting the recipients 【A10】________ the goods came from were buried deep inside packages or weren’t included at all; and, of course, clearing up these matters 【A11】________customer service was a maddening, time-consuming process. Complaints about online shopping aren’t limited to obvious cases in【A12】________ orders were screwed up. In its annual Holiday E-Retail Shopping Index, the analytics firm ForeSee asked more than 24,000 consumers about their recent online shopping experiences, and overall, we’re not overjoyed. On a 100-point satisfaction scale, e-retail as a 【A13】________ received a score of 78, down from 80 in the 2011 holiday season.

While there are many reasons【A14】________consumers seem to be less satisfied with e-retail, the growing trend of disappointment may in fact be benefiting the world’s largest e-retailer, Amazon. Every time a retailer screws up a customer’s 【A15】________ , and every time a site tries to sell items at absurdly high prices, Amazon looks better and better by comparison. Not only is Amazon arguably the best in the business with speedy, efficient processes for purchasing and customer service, it is also famous for especially competitive pricing. It’s no wonder that for the eight year in a row, Amazon received the highest overall customer satisfaction rating.