A study of 170 online retail sites finds that on a whole, customer service is not great and the overall level of security and privacy protection is negligable.

In the survey 36 percent of sites were deemed to have poor security and privacy protection 32 percent had "satisfactory to good" and another 32 percent were good. The study, conducted for Ryerson Polytechnic University, deemed Garden.com as the number one retail site. Only 4 Canadian retail sites reached the top 40 in the final listing. Websites were rated according to their marketing, visual merchandising, assortment and customer service - including security and privacy, shipping costs, shipping time and return policy.