BizRate to Monitor In-Store Customer Satisfaction for Office Depot Stores; Office Depot and BizRate.com Create Co-Branded Site to Enhance Customer Service.

Business Editors

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 5, 2002

BizRate.com (www.bizrate.com), a research leader and the No. 1 comparison shopping site on the Web, today announced it will provide a nationwide in-store customer satisfaction monitoring program for Office Depot (NYSE:ODP), the world's largest seller of office products. Under the new agreement, BizRate.com will provide customer satisfaction measures for its more than 850 brick-and-mortar stores in North America, in addition to powering Office Depot's online customer satisfaction performance tracking.

Earlier this year, the multi-channel research leader BizRate.com began monitoring in-store customer satisfaction for Office Depot. BizRate will provide an in-depth look at satisfaction measures including: overall shopping experience; ease and speed of checkout; ease of finding products; and product selection and delivery, and will be incorporated into Office Depot's Executive Information System.

"Multi-channel retailers like Office Depot place a high emphasis on total customer satisfaction, both offline and online," said Chuck Davis, CEO of BizRate.com. "Smart retailers understand that customer satisfaction is a key business driver, and retailers who snooze on satisfaction will lose on repeat business. Recent BizRate data shows that as overall customer satisfaction increased from a score of 5 to 10, the repurchase rate increased by 80% -- which also equates to an 80%+ increase in revenue generated."

Officedepot.com became a Gold Star Merchant on BizRate in 1999 and has since been rated by over 100,000 customers -- averaging at 8.7 or higher on a ten point scale at the point of sale, based on detailed analysis on measures such as website performance, product and price.

"Office Depot is committed to providing its customers with fanatical customer service," said Jerry Colley, President of North American Retail Stores for Office Depot. "Now, by teaming up with BizRate, we will be able to more effectively evaluate our retail in-store customer service, which should help us better deliver on our promise of being the most compelling place to shop for office supplies."

Merchants who have experienced the largest order growth consistently outperform low growth merchants on all customer satisfaction metrics. Past experience, good prices, and free shipping head the list of importance to online shoppers, according to research by BizRate.com, which already measures the online customer satisfaction performance of more than 2,000 e-tailers.

Customers who wish to participate are invited to log onto the co-branded site, www.od.bizrate.com to take a brief survey and to be automatically registered for a chance to win valuable prizes from Office Depot. No purchase is necessary to enter the sweepstakes.

About BizRate.com

Founded in 1996 and based in Los Angeles, BizRate.com (www.bizrate.com) is the leading comparison shopping site on the Web. Consumers get the best deals at BizRate.com by comparing prices and store ratings, connecting millions of buyers to thousands of sellers in a single, organized location. Recently voted one of the "Top 100 Web Sites for 2001" by PC Magazine, BizRate.com's marketplace offers shoppers access to a powerful product search engine, standardized check-out, exclusive deals, "hot" product listings and gift guides to empower consumers to "shop smartly" across 20 popular store categories and more than 2,000 merchants. Through BizRate.com's unbiased consumer rating system, compiled exclusively from point-of-sale and fulfillment surveys of participating merchants, shoppers can compare merchants across 10 service dimensions. BizRate.com ratings appear on Consumer Reports Online and in Consumer Reports magazine.

About Office Depot

No one sells more office products to more customers in more countries than Office Depot. As of September 29, 2001, Office Depot operated 846 office supply superstores in the United States and Canada, in addition to a national business-to-business delivery network supported by 25 delivery centers, more than 60 local sales offices and eight regional call centers. Furthermore, the Company had operations in 15 countries outside of the United States and Canada, including 28 office supply stores in France and seven in Japan that are owned and operated by the Company; and 101 additional office supply stores under joint venture and licensing agreements operating under the Office Depot(R) name in five foreign countries.

The Company also operates an award-winning U.S. Office Depot(R) brand Web site at www.officedepot.com where customers can access Office Depot's low competitive prices seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. The Company also operates thirteen other Web sites, under the Office Depot(R) and Viking Office Products(R) names, in the U.S. and eight international countries including: Austria, Australia, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Office Depot's common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ODP and is included in the S&P 500 Index. Office Depot is an Official Sponsor of the U.S. 2002 and 2004 Olympic Team.