Michael sent a message to Kevin Mansell – Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Kohl’s Corporation – Email Address that said:
Dear Mr Mansell, your Kohl's Customer Service is a complete disgrace. Unfortunately your staff know how to avoid getting bad survey results by not disconnecting the phone line before the customer is forced to disconnect after listening to music for ever. Each time I was asked to complete a survey at the end of my call but because your staff do not disconnect I was unable to report just how bad things really are in your Customer Services department. When asking for a supervisor all you get is put on hold and have to listen to music until you give up and call back. Not one of your staff sounded sincere in trying to help but sounded as if they are reading off a script and just blamed your inflexible computer systems making it impossible for them to fix customer issues. When I finally got a supervisor who said he would sort out the issue and promised to call me back at exactly 10am the following day there was no call and due to ongoing delays in fixing the problem things had got even worse. Then I asked to escalate to a higher level and was told a senior person would call me in between 24 and 72 hours but guess what – no call – and no fix!
In the past we have enjoyed shopping at Kohl's but our latest on-line order was a nightmare. We ordered 12 items on 27 April which we paid for with our US Debit card (as you do not accept international credit cards on your kohls.com web site). On 28 April we received notification the items had shipped and got a Fedex tracking number. However, although a shipping label had been created we later found nothing had ever been sent to Fedex. I called Kohls many times as you will see from the record against this order number and finally we were promised the situation would be fixed. Your supervisor told us he needed 24 hours to fix the problem and he would call us by 10am the following day, on May 5. So we were confident that at last the issue would be resolved as our account had been debited days before. We checked this because on 4 May we were advised by golf18network.com that their system had been hacked and our card details stolen. They advised us to get our Bank to cancel and re-issue our debit cards which we did, knowing that Kohls had already received payment for the goods and shipping documentation had been completed with your supervisor promising to sort the issue. Your supervisor knew we were returning to the UK on 16 May and all the items were presents for our grandchildren. We were then advised that even though Kohl's had advised us the items were on their way and we had been charged we needed to cancel the order and re-order. As our cards were being re-issued all we had was our International credit card which is accepted at the stores but not on line. We were told there was nothing Kohl's could do to re-instate the order and our account would be credited in 10 days. After spending about another hour on the phone we were told the only thing we could do was to go to a Kohl's store and purchase gift cards with our International credit card and then re-order all the items. Guess what, after all the delays, lack of call backs etc. we followed the instructions but because of all the delays Kohl's were then out of stock of the items we ordered!
I was so angry that I called your Customer Services back and asked to escalate the issue but was told I was not allowed to speak with anyone in authority and had to book a call-back which could take 24–72 hours. I booked the call-back but guess what - NO CALL-BACK - NO MESSAGE – NO APOLOGY - A DISGRACE!
Then we got a refund for the original purchase – less the tax we had paid – I had to send two emails to get the tax back!
The way Kohl's appears to operate these days I very much doubt you will ever see this email, so I guess nothing will change.
Regards, Michael.
