A second rate retail chain with a lot of consumer complaints. Corporate Headquarters, Kohl's Department Stores, N56 W17000 Ridgewood Drive, Menomonee Falls, WI 53051. Phone: (262) 703-7000. In 2012 a consumer investigation by CBS News discovered that Kohl's had engaged in the practice of marking up products in the weeks before a sale in order to make products appear as if they were being sold at discounted prices and artificially inflating the amount of the price mark-down. Full story below.
Friday, January 22, 2016
Before going into how bad Kohl's is I found this online FYI, if it isn't of interest then just scroll down to the rest of the blog info-
Receive just one phone call meant for someone else and you might chalk it up to a simple misunderstanding. But getting thousands of prerecorded calls for your ex-boyfriend over a more than two-year period and the situation becomes annoying, aggravating, and — according to one Pennsylvania woman — grounds for a lawsuit.
In a complaint [PDF], filed this week in federal court, the woman accuses Kohl’s of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by persistently placing robocalls to her cellphone, despite repeated explanations that she was not the intended recipient and requests to place her on the company’s do not call list.
According to the lawsuit, beginning in Nov. 2013 and continuing until Dec. 2015, Kohl’s placed phone calls to the woman’s number on a repetitive and continuous basis.
The calls, intended for the woman’s ex-boyfriend, originated from an automatic telephone dialing system and contained prerecorded messages.
When the woman answered the calls — which were sometimes received at a rate of two to three times a day — she was given two options: press one if she was the intended caller, or press two if she was not.
Despite repeatedly choosing the second option, the woman says she continued to receive calls from the Wisconsin-based retailer.
In November 2014 and January 2015, the woman says she spoke with actual Kohl’s representatives explaining that they had the wrong number, and asking them to please stop calling and place her information on the do not call list.
While the rep contacted in January 2015, acknowledged the mistake and said the woman would be placed on the do not call list, she continued to receive calls intended for her ex-boyfriend.
By filing the lawsuit, the woman seeks statutory damages of $500 per telephone call in violation of TCPA. However, the suit notes that it is possible the woman could receive up to $1,500 per call if a jury determines Kohl’s willfully or knowingly violated TCPA.
Consumerist’s request for comment from Kohl’s was not immediately returned, we’ll update this post when we hear back.
If you’re receiving unwanted robocalls on your phone, you should file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission so that they can track and potentially put a stop to these calls.
There are also a number of ways to reduce the annoyance of robocalls. Last year, Consumer Reports readers tested various devices and services intended to prevent robocalls from getting through.
And more than 500,000 people have signed the End Robocalls petition from our colleagues at Consumers Union, calling on the country’s phone companies to finally provide customers with free and easy-to-use call-blocking options.
Photograph by David Paul Morris — Bloomberg via Getty Images
It’s paring down its 1,160-store fleet.
Kohl’swill close 18 stores in 2016 in anticipation of another year of meager sales gains. The number may not sound huge, but it’s the first time the retailer has had a store-closing campaign.
Earlier this month, Kohl’s reported comparable sales rose a modest 0.4% during the holiday season. Now the department store expects comparable sales, which exclude recently closed or opened stores, to range from unchanged to rising 1% for most in 2016. Total sales may even fall, Kohl’s warned investors on Thursday. So now the retailer has decided to pare some of its 1,160-store fleet. Kohl’s has not yet said where the closings will occur.
“While the decision to close stores is a difficult one, we evaluated all of the elements that contribute to making a store successful, and we were thoughtful and strategic in our approach. We are committed to leveraging our resources on our more productive assets,” Kohl’s CEO Kevin Mansell said in an interview.
While the planned closings represent not even 1% of square footage, they represent a shift in Kohl’s strategy toward smaller stores and outlets. As first reported by Fortune in October, Kohl’s will open seven smaller stores of 35,000 square feet each, or just under half the size of a regular Kohl’s store, in 2016. The retailer will also expand its new chain of outlets called Off-Aisle, adding two locations to the pilot stores. What’s more, Kohl’s will open 12 Fila outlet stores to showcase that sportswear brand.
The shift comes as Kohl’s turnaround plan, launched in 2014 and called the “Greatness Agenda,” has helped it avoid sales declines that have hurt Macy’s , but they still have yet to significantly boost sales. The chain has reported five straight quarters of comparable sales growth, but the pace of gains has been modest.
Monday, January 4, 2016
ALWAYS ON SALE
Kohl’s Math Means Percentages Don’t Make Any Sense
In retail, Target Math is when one of two things happen: an item on sale isn’t actually marked down (sometimes it becomes more expensive) or an item becomes more expensive when you buy it in greater quantities. Maybe we need to start tracking a new variant called Kohl’s Math, where percentage-off signs don’t actually reflect the “sale” price that they’re supposed to.
Kohl’s, after all, is a store where merchandise is perpetually on sale, and percentages are essential to its business model. A few years ago, a reader wrote in, horrified at a sign informing customers that a sale taking 65% off, then 25% off, since this did not mean that the merchandise was now 85% off.
Reader Matt noticed this sign at Kohl’s, which advertises 50% off a shirt that originally cost $44, making it $19.99. No, that’s not how percentages work unless you’re rounding down to the closest $10, which isn’t a thing that any retailer does.
Shoppers have accused Kohl’s of posting prices that don’t reflect reality in other, less consumer-friendly ways: customers in California sued the retailer, accusing it of posting “original prices” that no one had ever paid on their merchandise, giving customers a false impression of how much money they saved. Wouldn’t saving 54.5% be better than saving 50%?
