When Should You Expect That Last Minute Holiday Gift to Arrive?

When it comes to the holidays, surprises should be left to the gifts, not the delivery speed of products you order online. That’s why we tested the top 25 Internet Retailers for standard delivery speed. These are the same 25 retailers that we studied in the 2011 Cyber Monday Customer Service Study.

We ordered several products from each of the top retailers via standard shipping to various parts of the country over the last few weeks to test how long it took for the items to arrive.

Who was the fastest, and who was the slowest?

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Some key highlights from the study include:

• 8 retailers had an average standard shipping time of three days or less: Zappos.com (2 days), Newegg.com (2.3 days), HPshopping.com (2.5 days), JCPenney.com (2.7 days), Amazon.com, (2.7 days), Gap.com (2.8 days), Dell.com (2.8 days), and SonyStyle.com (2.8 days).
• 3 retailers had an average standard shipping time of over 5 days:  ToysRUs.com (5.5 days),  HSN.com (5.5 days), and Kohls.com (5 days).

Does the speed of delivery depend on what part of the country you’re in?

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Turns out that the average delivery speed for standard shipping is slightly faster for those of you on the east coast (another east coast bias?).

Wishing everyone a no-surprises, hassle-free, speedy standard shipping holiday!