I wanted to take a few minutes to send you and email about the extremely poor customer service my wife received at your Grove City, Ohio store the evening of 04/17/2018. My wife had gone to the store to return a coat I had purchased from the clearance rack, after trying it on I accidentally grabbed the wrong size and purchased it.
My wife went last night to try and exchange it, she went back to the rack and grabbed what she thought was the correct one as well as an additional winter coat that was on the clearance rack that was not labelled. When she went to customer service, she was met by an Customer Service Associate named "Deborah" (No last name but grayish hair and name tag said she had been there since 2014) who was extremely rude and condescending to her their entire encounter. Deborah was apparently upset that my wife asked her what the clearance price was on the additional winter coat from the clearance rack, Deborah scolded her and said "THIS coat wasn't on sale, there is NO WAY this was on the clearance rack where did you really get it?" in effect she was accusing my wife of lying to her over something that may of probably just been misplaced inventory. My wife politely told her it WAS on the clearance rack and that she wasn't interested in that coat at full price.
My wife, Melissa, moved on the exchange transaction. When she handed the coat to be exchanged to Deborah, who stated "What have you done to that coat?! You have obviously been wearing it." In all honesty, the coat was taken home and tried on one time which it didn't fit around me -I literally could have ripped it if I stretched my shoulders. All the tags, both Kohl's purchase tags and the Chaps manufacturer tags, were still attached to the arm and lapel. When my wife pointed that out Deborah she incredulous, and she said "You must be a smoker, and worn it while smoking because you got ashes all over the coat -I can't accept this -it's damaged" (neither my wife or I are smokers, and when Melissa told her this Deborah didn't believe her and scoffed) my wife was very upset and embarrassed by this time, and offered to take the coat and leave... she specifically said that she would come back when there was someone else to assist her.
When Deborah heard this she said that SHE was trying to assist her and asked my wife for the new coat that we wanted to exchange for the small one. Deborah stated "Can't you tell this isn't even the same coat; it's not even the same material -you can't tell that?" to further degrade my wife. At which point my wife asked for the coat back and started to leave when Deborah said that she would refund the original coat and asked for the receipt -which was linked to my Wife's reward account. When Melissa told her this Deborah said "you don't even have the receipt?!" and began arguing with my wife about whether it could be returned using the Rewards account number, which we had done in the past. Eventually one of the other nearby Customer Service Agents told Deborah "Yes you can do that" and educated Deborah on how.
I am sorry I don't have all the complete details about the encounter but I wasn't present. I will say that for my wife to say we are never shopping at Kohl's again it had to be pretty bad. We were so happy when that store opened in Grove City and have been shopping there ever since, it's where we basically buy all our clothing for our family of 5. I know that the loss of our spending would never impact anything to a big company, but I wanted to take the time to let you know about the event and make you aware of how this Sales Associate is treating people who have issue or returns of products. It is a significant the lapse in the level of service we have always enjoyed in your store in the past in the infrequent times there have been issues with an item. read more