CVS Is the Retailer Americans Are Most Likely to Regret Buying From

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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CVS Is the Retailer Americans Are Most Likely to Regret Buying From

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Reputation and customer service can make or break a business. These things also can be linked to rapid growth. Amazon is often praised for the way it treats customers, its wide range of products and its swift delivery times. Apple, although not a traditional retailer, does have hundreds of stores. These are known for knowledgeable salespeople, beautiful stores and signature products.

Interestingly, some of America’s largest retailers get poor scores for customer service. Walmart generally falls at the bottom of the list. Why do people shop there? Perhaps because it has a store everywhere, or perhaps it is low prices.

One measure by which store chains are judged is the ease with which people can buy a gift, and then return it if necessary. We all know at least one “difficult” gift recipient within our family or social circles, the person who requires much more thought and deliberation than usual to buy for successfully.

The fear of being considered a poor gift-giver can cause us to overspend, with “finding the perfect gift” or “trying to give the best gift” as the top reasons usually given for blowing a gift-buying budget. One study found that Americans spend an average of two hours of research before buying a gift and spend $106 on it.
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Gift-buyer’s remorse is common and can be associated with the retailers from which gifts are purchased. To identify the one Americans are most likely to regret buying from, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed survey data collected in 2021 for The Gifted Few Gifters: America’s Gifting Habits and Expectations Explained, a study by WeThrift, an online search engine that surfaces popular coupons. WeThrift polled 1,010 people who are used to buying gifts for others.

Amazon proved to be the most popular of the 18 major retailers in the study. About half of those who bought from the online giant ended up having regrets about their purchases, but that still makes Amazon the retailer they were least likely to regret buying from. It is probably no surprise that people often regret buying gifts from chain pharmacies or grocery stores, but even a premium vendor like Apple ranks higher than you might expect in gift-buying regret.

The retailer people most regret buying gifts from is CVS. Here are the details:

  • 75% of respondents feel regret purchasing a gift from CVS.
  • 11% of respondents shop at CVS (fourth smallest share on the list).

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Click here to see all the retailers Americans are most likely to regret buying from.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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