Black Friday falls on the same day every year, so it's not like it sneaks up on the retail industry. Yet that's exactly what one might surmise based on my attempts to shop at Kohls.com on Black Friday. The advertised deals were excellent, but the website was unable to process my purchase, despite several hours of attempts. The site kept going down, resetting my shopping cart, coming up with error messages, and asking me to "wait a few minutes and try again" — after which I would have to find all the items I wanted to buy all over again and put them in my cart again. I got as far as to hit purchase once, and it looked like it might have gone through... But then it reset again and did not. After several hours of this, the site finally began working again... But only after the sale was over and the prices had all increased. At this point, I thought I might do better with a live human being, but multiple phone calls to the customer service department were met with long hold times, and after being accidentally hung up on three different times, I reached a live person who said no one appeared to be answering the online help number. I was also told there was no email address where I could get help. I did eventually find an email address online, and explained the situation, where I was told that they had fixed the IT problem so shopping online was once again possible... However, no one at Kohls was interested in addressing the fact that the prices were now significantly higher (in some cases double what the promised sale was). When a company offers a great sale, but creates a situation where you can't purchase the items until after the sale is over, it comes across as a "bait and switch" tactic. For a company whose motto is "Expect great things, " I was extremely disappointed in the poor customer service.
0 comments