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 it fast.

Luxury and mid-price department stores increasingly see customer service as their main attraction and the best way to draw in shoppers from discount stores and online sellers. 'We spend a lot of time, money and energy attracting new customers,' says Richard Baker, chief executive of Hudson's Bay Co., owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor. 'The last thing we want to do is, after all that work, lose a customer over a bad experience.'

That is why Andrea Robins spent several hours on a recent weekday hunting for a handbag. Ms. Robins is Saks's seniordirector of customer service, who solves problems that escalate from any of the retailer's 113 full-price stores and outlets. A customer at a Saks Fifth Avenue store in Florida had bought a $1,850 Gucci bag to be shipped to her daughter in Washington state. The store mistakenly sent it via ground, not air, and the bag wasn't going to make it in time for the daughter's birthday.

'It's not acceptable to say, 'We're human and a mistake was made,'' Ms. Robins says. 'The commitment to service says, 'Now what are we going to do to fix it?''

Ms. Robins and her team first tried to reroute the package to a faster shipping method -- but that wouldn't be fast enough. They considered placing a new order for the handbag with quicker shipping, but it was out of stock. Finally, they called up a Gucci store in Seattle, bought the bag from the retailer and had it sent to the daughter -- just in time.

A survey of 1,003 people conducted this fall at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business found consumerdissatisfaction with retailers is on the rise. Half the people surveyed had a problem with a product or service in the past 12 months, up from 45% in 2011, the last time the study was conducted. And the public is frustrated, with 68% of respondents saying a problem made them 'very' or 'extremely' upset, up from just 60% in 2011.

'There were two things that increased the most -- yelling and cursing,' says Scott Broetzmann, chief executive of Customer Care Measurement & Consulting, the survey's principal designer.

Several executives at both Lord & Taylor and Saks said they always want to know about a problem, rather than have an upset customer leave the store in a huff. At the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship New York City store, a touristdestination that sees close to a million shoppers between Thanksgiving and Christmas, every receipt has the email address of John Cruz, the store's general manager, printed at the bottom.

The Internet is a popular place for shoppers to vent. The survey found 35% of people with a problem posted about it on a social-networking site, up from 19% in 2011. It's a way to 'voice your dissatisfaction with the world,' says Mary Jo Bitner, executivedirector of the ASU business school's Center for Services Leadership.

Stores often evaluate and take the conversation offline to resolve it. Earlier this month, a customer of Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus Group's high-end New York department store, lost a stud on a pair of Prada ankle boots and tweeted, 'SO UPSETTING! What Can I Do?