The holidays can feel like a test of your mastery of the seasonal arts of shopping and—unfortunately—complaining.

It's crunch time for gift buyers, the week when stores and websites see a surge in sales, and with it comes more potential for problems and frustrations. The multitude of ways to do holiday shopping—in stores, online, from a smartphone—poses new challenges for shoppers and stores. Whether it's faulty merchandise, the wrong price or shipping that is too slow, time-starved customers want a resolution and they want...