Kohls is always the most convenient place for me to do returns but lately it hasn't been popping up for me. Strangely enough, other people I know still see Kohls as an option for returns on the same items I'm buying. Do they check this stuff on a per account basis or is Amazon just rolling back Kohls's returns
Like many of you, I noticed a few months ago that Kohl's was no longer listed as a return location for any of my orders, regardless of what the orders were. I found this odd, because now all the free return location options available to me (Whole Foods, Staples, UPS Store, Amazon Dropoff) are all substantially further from my home than my closest Kohl's is.
The "solution" (as some of you may know) is simply to change your physical address during the "How would you like to return your items?" step (see picture below) to either the address of a Kohl's itself, or an address you know of that is in very close proximity to one.
As for information, I finally worked up the willpower to attempt communication with Amazon's customer service team about this issue today. It was difficult to explain the situation (especially via chat), but eventually they sent me a link to receive a phone call from their team. After explaining that it's not an issue with a single specific order, I was transferred to someone who works for the website tech support department.
I was initially told that the return labels are not generated based on address proximity and that a Kohl's return is simply not possible for certain items. When I (respectfully) explained that might not be correct since as mentioned (and as others here on reddit have already figured out) you can simply edit the return address to bypass this, the rep finally understood and told me that was actually very helpful information that she could pass onto her managers.
So I guess what I'm saying is, this might be an issue that is only solved if enough people complain directly to them? Not ideal, but I'm 99% sure the rep was genuinely happy to pass along that information after I explained how the "change address" loophole works. (Which by the way, is not against ToS or anything, that option exists for a reason).
Honestly it's not a huge deal to just keep doing this, it's only ever been an issue once when we mistakenly had an exchange sent to the Kohl's by mistake and had to jump through some hoops with the store's employees to receive our package.
But dammit I want my Kohl's return, so I figured I'd make this post and hopefully it's helpful to someone (and eventually more convenient for everyone).
TL:DR - Can't see Kohl's as a return option? Change your return address to the Kohl's store you want to return to and then chat with Amazon (ask for website tech support specifically) and politely tell them it makes no sense for you to not be able to return to a Kohl's when it's the closest and most convenient location.
https://www.modernretail.co/retailers/kohls-has-stopped-accepting-amazon-returns-at-some-store-locations/