Kohl's

Full review
Overview
Shopping on kohls.com was one of the worst online shopping experiences I have ever had.  From finding the things I needed to receiving my order (or trying to), every step of the process was faulty and incompetent.  In the end, after waiting nearly a month, I cancelled my order, at which point I had to deal with even more frustrating customer service.  No bargain is worth this much hassle, especially since the whole point of shopping online was to save time and energy by avoiding the store.


The Shortfalls of the Shopping Experience
As a career buyer, and one with experience as an e-commerce buyer, I notice the things that do and do not work for online shopping sites.  kohls.com is set up so that if you're running a search for a specific product through category searches, your browsing experience won't be too painful.  Because there are far too many specific categories than there should be, it will probably take more click-throughs to find what you need but eventually, you'll get there.

If, however, you are not a category shopper, you're screwed.  The site is not at all set up for shopping by brand, price point, or size unless you're already within a narrower category search.  For instance, if you shop in women's shoes, you have to go through the subcategories to search by price, size, and colour rather than straight off the bat.  Meaning, if you want to see all size 7 shoes, you'll have to click through each subcategory, then by size, and then go through all the styles.  That's many more clicks than if it were like zappos.com, for instance, where you can search by size and even view all on one page.

Problems Receiving the Order
After finally going through to find everything you need, placing the order was relatively easy.  However, receiving it was another matter entirely.  It was 5 days before I received a shipping confirmation email, which is much longer than with other online retailers.  Still, I waited it out.  However, when the FedEx tracking message was the exact same with no updates for another week, I decided to call customer service to sort it out.  They told me to keep checking for updates since it can sometimes take a few days after shipment.  A few days turned into another week and another week, so that I finally called to cancel. 

When I explained to the last customer service rep what happened, she was courteous and apologetic but still not really able to give me any solid answers.  She told me she would try to expedite the refund without having to wait  to locate the shipment, which is supposedly the normal policy.  What a pain!  Never again will I consider kohls.com when there are so many other bargain sites out there that offer much better service and merchandise at a much faster rate.