Introduction
Kohl’s had banned my account two years ago. At the time, I was able to create a new account for my wife, using the same address and even same Kohl’s charge card. I slowed down on my reselling, so didn’t place too many orders on it over the 2 years. I hadn’t bought anything from them in over 6 months on the account. I had returned something last month and had $200 of Kohl’s cash to use, so I made an order for 6 pairs of Nike shoes on sale (3 in one size, 3 in the other.) Soon after, I got an email saying I needed to call to process the order. Since it was my wife’s account, she had to call in. They asked her for the GC number, which she eventually told them. After a few minutes on hold, they then told her that her account was banned for being a reseller. And that’s that.
What happened?
A few things happened before that order that could have caused the ban. Here are some things:
- The account had been hacked a week before that. The email had been changed. I had my wife call in to have it changed back and had the password reset. So maybe this put eyes on the account.
- I had cancelled my Kohl’s charge card about a month ago, and I was paying with 100% GC. I hear that Kohl’s doesn’t like pure GC orders. The GC I had used was on the account before it was hacked if that makes a difference
- I had returned quite a number of items over the last 6 months. Since I’ve stopped reselling, I just wanted to get rid of the excess unsold inventory, so maybe that flagged my account.
- Or maybe it was buying 6 pairs of Nike shoes (3 each in 2 diff sizes)
Lessons Learned
Seems that Kohl’s is ban happy against resellers these days. I’m not quite sure what caused the ban, so try not to do what I did. By the way, I took the $200 Kohl’s cash in store and found some great super soft tshirts for $10 as well as some electronics that I could flip.
This I don’t understand. A sale is still a sale. Why does Kohl’s care what happens to your product once it flies off their shelves? Are they worried that people will buy resale and not go to their stores, when their stores have the lower price and trustworthy name and shipping? Color me confused.
I’m guessing their 30% and 40% sale are loss leaders for them. Meaning they are willing to take a loss on the discount if you come on other days and pay regular price. If resellers only shop on those days, Kohl’s loses money on us (compared to the grandmas shopping.)
I did what I thought was pretty heavy volume at Kohl’s in 2014 and 2015 and never got banned. I slowed down because they started excluding so many products it was difficult to resell at any sort of volume. 2016 was pretty slow although I did have one big order. I’ve done everything you’ve done except for returning lots of items. I probably only returned 2-3 items a year. Either I slowed down just as they were starting to ban people or returning items flags accounts. Maybe just lucky.
did you use GC? if not I think you can last much longer. Using full GC leads to insta cancelled orders now if your account was ever flagged, But maybe you were lucky and never had the Kohls Rat team looking at your account lol
I had a mix, probably 75% full GC orders, 25% partial GC partial Kohl’s charge orders.