Returning an Item

The other day I had to return an item to Kohl's, which is a department store in certain parts of the country. Mostly they sell clothing, but they also sell toys, kitchen appliances and other things of that nature.

The item I was attempting to return had been purchased on their web site approximately 30 days prior. They allow you to return online purchases to their "real" stores with no hassle, within 90 days or something like that. As far as retailers go, Kohl's is great for accepting returns and being reasonable in the first place, this just makes me like them more. The brick wall that the first person had was that the receipt that I had brought in was not the right one. Apparently, I should have brought in the packing slip, which had a receipt ID on it. This turned out to be more of a problem than I or the store manager could have dreamed.

On the sheet that I had, it had my order number, the itemized listing of all the purchases, the credit card confirmation number, and the price for each item. However, it turns out, they cannot issue a refund to the credit card without the receipt ID, which has a terminal ID and some other information on it, which is only printed on the packing slip. The absurdity of printing that one bit of information on only one of the numerous receipts you could obtain aside, I was shocked this information could not be obtained from the order number. So was the store manager.

The store manager was great, he was on the phone with his help desk, refusing to accept this explanation. Their first answer was that they could not look up a receipt ID using the order number. Then they tried to tell him they could not look in their system further than two weeks. He said that if I was able to log in and print it out, then that could not be correct and kept pressing them after every excuse they gave. This went on for nearly 30 minutes. Finally, five or six people and two supervisors later, he was able to get the information he needed to do a return.

I was impressed by his refusal to accept the perceived limitation of technology. So many people will not take the time to question what makes no sense and push back, especially when it comes to computers. I have received the answer of "the computers won't let us do it," or "my system doesn't work that way" too many times to count. Usually it is me telling them there probably is a way to do it and to escalate the problem to someone else who can figure it out. It was refreshing to not have to do this, and have someone in charge do it for me.

We had a great conversation as he was on hold. He was explaining his frustration with the fact that they had this system that could do just about anything imaginable, and that there just had to be a way. He did not believe he could not do this simple task, and making me wait two weeks for a check from the corporate office was stupid. If only all retailers were this technologically literate. This guy should be CEO, seriously.

When it was all finished, I wrote a nice comment on their web site. Whenever my expectations are exceeded or someone goes out of their way to help me, I believe in congratulating them. I know from experience that in retail, usually all you hear about are the problems. It is nice to get a thanks from a customer. When the customer goes through corporate, even better. Keep that in mind next time someone offers outstanding service. It only takes a minute and can make their day or week.