Should Kohl’s Stop Accepting Amazon Returns?

Kohl's has temporarily stopped accepting Amazon returns at some stores amid complaints aired on social media by store associates.

Kohl’s said in a statement to Modern Retail, which first reported the move, “To continue to learn from our customers, we are conducting a test in a handful of our stores where we will be temporarily discontinuing the third-party returns service. Kohl’s has a test and learn culture that helps us to evolve our store experience and stay informed about customers’ expectations and preferences.”

Under the current setup, those returning Amazon packages often receive a 25%-off coupon to shop at Kohl’s.

On a Reddit post, Kohl’s employees widely praised the test removal, with the thread indicating that some stores are seeing hundreds of Amazon returns per day.

Among the comments from associates:

• “I hope they do this overall, Amazon is a headache and can't be worth it with the amount of work and man hours it takes to do it. Just palletizing and loading it onto the truck is wasted hours, let alone the receiving and sorting side.”
• “Even though everyone is trained for Amazon, we have several associates that simply cannot lift the boxes due to either bad back/neck/shoulder issues. They did not sign up for it as if they worked at the UPS Store.”
• “They can't get rid of this fast enough. These people are not our customers, but they do complain when the line is long and they have to wait. Let them take their garbage somewhere else.”

A few positive comments indicated some shoppers do use the coupon to shop in the store afterward. One said, “Lots of them love the 25% coupon and tell me. When I'm in the break room I'll have cashiers mention ‘Oh it must be busy back there because [they’ve] all been at the registers using the coupon.’ I would be happy if we got rid of it. I could see a lot of customers being upset over it though."

Kohl’s, which rolled out the program nationwide in 2019 after a test, indicated that at least 2 million new customers visited Kohl’s stores in 2020 due to its acceptance of Amazon returns, with about a third being millennials. In 2023, Kohl’s officials on an earnings call stated that the program continued to drive traffic.

A Washington Post article from July 2024, however, claimed programs enabling Amazon customers to return merchandise to Kohl’s, Staples, Whole Foods, and Amazon Fresh locations for free are “turning store associates’ jobs into a retail horror story.”

Store workers told the newspaper that Amazon package returners — reportedly tagged as “Amazombies” by associates — have “become a plague on their working lives, wasting staff time without increasing revenue while creating long lines, fraying tempers, and generating piles of boxes and plastic waste.”

A 2023 study by academic researchers in the UK concluded that “returns from online sales, particularly returns to store, are seriously impacting company profits.”

Kohl’s new test comes as Ashley Buchanan, who was appointed Kohl’s CEO in mid-January, recently introduced a number of “tactical, short-term” steps to help stabilize the retailer’s business — including rebalancing assortments, improving in-stocks, and reducing coupon exclusions — following three straight years of same-store declines.