- You can now return eligible Amazon items, without a box or label, at a Kohl’s location near you.
- There are more than 1,150 Kohl’s stores nationwide, so it should be easy for you to find one and drop off your Amazon return the next time you’re driving around town.
- Kohl’s is hoping that once you’re inside a store, you’ll stick around to shop its wide, low-priced selection of products.
As much as we appreciate being able to return the things we bought on Amazon that didn’t turn out as expected, sometimes the whole process – printing out the shipping label and paying for shipping, locating a box to put the item in, and coordinating a pickup or drop-off – is just inconvenient enough to make us put off the return for weeks.
If you live near a Kohl’s, which has more than 1,150 stores in the contiguous US, returning those Amazon purchases will soon become a lot easier.
You can now return eligible Amazon items, without a box or label, at a Kohl’s location near you.
The program expands on a 2017 pilot partnership that made these returns available at 100 Kohl’s stores in the Los Angeles, Chicago, and Milwaukee areas.
Instead of taking the time out of your busy schedule to check off every step in the return process, you can simply go to your nearby Kohl's to let an associate package and send off your returned items for free. They'll do it for you regardless of the return season and whether the items are packaged or unpackaged.
To coordinate this return, start at Amazon's online Return Center so you can designate a dropoff at a Kohl's location of your choice. Amazon will email you a QR code, which you'll show to the Kohl's associate. They'll take care of the rest of the return process for you. According to the Kohl's website, they will pack, label, and ship your return for free.
So, what's in it for Kohl's?
Once you're in the store, Kohl's is hoping you'll linger and do some shopping while you're there anyway. You can immediately replace the item you just returned, or shop Amazon devices in-store, a product relationship that started in March 2019.
When a Business Insider reporter tried out the Kohl's return service back in 2017, she immediately received a 25% off coupon, valid in-store for seven days - not a bad deal to entice someone to stick around.
Kohl's is betting that shoppers will notice and appreciate the shared values that first attracted them to Amazon, like competitive prices and perk-filled loyalty and rewards programs. In the end, coordinating Amazon returns is a low cost way for Kohl's to acquire and retain customers.