We started this series a little while ago and took a hiatus; I hope we can get back on track going forward. Thanks again to Oren from Oren’s Money Saver for this series. You can check out the first 5 part of the series here:
- Part 1 – Pros and Cons of Reselling
- Part 2 –  Getting Price Down as low as Possible
- Part 3- Sourcing Deals
- Part 4 – Staples
- Part 5 – eBay
There are tons of places to source deals from and I don’t want to do a separate post on each one but Kohl’s deserves its own post. After that we will combine many retailers into one post.
Contents
Kohl’s
There is so much to be said about Kohl’s. Â I love Kohl’s. Â I don’t think Kohl’s loves me but I haven’t made it to their bad list yet. Â Kohl’s makes it easy to source. Â Most of the time Kohl’s is significantly more expensive than other stores. Â We don’t buy those items, do we? Â Of course not.
If you find anything that is the same price at Amazon, you probably have a good thing to buy. Â If it is cheaper on Kohl’s (much more rare but does happen), you usually have something great to buy.
Kohl’s marks up prices and then makes it easy to lower the price. Â If it is very expensive, it might be something good to buy for yourself after discounts but if it is cheaper at Kohl’s, you are in serious business.
Coupon Codes
You should not be paying full price at Kohl’s, period. Â There is always a coupon code available for a minimum of 10% but vast majority of the time there is a 15-20% promo code. Â Sometimes it goes up to 30-40% but those are less frequent.
Please keep in mind that some items are not eligible for coupon codes so it’s ok to pay full price for those if it is still a good deal 😉
Sometimes, the best coupon codes are only available if you use a Kohl’s charge card for at least a portion of the purchase. Â For that reason, I have a Kohl’s charge card (though I rarely use it for any significant balance).
There are great websites that will let you know about current coupon codes. Â RetailMeNot is a great one but you can also just Google “Kohl’s Coupon Code” and I’m sure you will find something.
Kohl’s Cash
Frequently Kohl’s has promotions where you can earn Kohl’s Cash. Â Usually, you can earn $10 in Kohl’s Cash for every $50 you spend at Kohl’s. Â The Kohl’s Cash can the be used at a future date.
If you resell merchandise it is usually possible to get full value or better from your Kohl’s Cash so it can be the equivalent of 20% off
Â
A note of caution – if you return an item that earned Kohl’s Cash and those rewards were redeemed, Kohl’s will subtract the Kohl’s Cash from your return. Â For example, if you bought something for $100 and earned $20 in Kohl’s cash and used the Kohl’s cash, if you return the $100 item, Kohl’s will only give you $80 back, not $100. Â Treat Kohl’s Cash like real cash if you can.
Yes2You Rewards
Kohl’s has not one, but 2 types of loyalty points! Â You earn one Yes2You point for every $1 you spend. Â Every 100 points is worth a $5 Yes2You rewards certificate which can be redeemed starting the following month after they are earned. Â This becomes an effective 5% back in Loyalty Points if they are used. Â Points expire after approximately 30 days.
Enroll in Yes2You rewards here
Discounted Gift cards
You can often buy Kohl’s gift cards at significant savings. Â I’ve seen them as high as 20% off on Raise and 16.7% on eBay. Â I’m sure others have done even better.
If you can’t find any good savings via gift cards (during the holidays when good discounts are hard to come by), you can always buy them from Gyft.
Gyft sells eGift Cards for many retailers at face value. Â The advantage to Gyft is that if you pay via PayPal and use a Chase Ink card you earn 5x Ultimate Rewards points. Â Even if there aren’t gift cards available on the exchanges (holiday season), you can still earn good savings that way.
Shopping Portals
If all that wasn’t enough, Kohl’s also usually has very generous portal earnings. Â During December of 2015, you were able to earn 10% back from Discover. Â That was worth 20% off if your cashback is doubled from Discover. Â It also helped that the quarterly rewards from Discover was Department Stores which included Kohl’s so if you used a Discover card you would earn 15% cashback (30% if it was doubled). Â They also often have great mileage portal earnings.
A Word of Caution
Kohl’s has been known to ban resellers. Â I don’t usually buy more than 4 of any one item. Â That’s an arbitrary number to chose but it has worked so far. Â It could be more than 4 is safe too, but reselling is a long term game. Â If you earn an extra $200 this year because you pushed the limits but can’t buy from Kohl’s anymore, that’s not worth it.
Conclusion
As you can see, if you find something that is good to resell at Kohl’s without any of the extras, you can do some real damage at Kohl’s. Â It can be hard to find at Kohl’s but you find it, you can do your happy dance.
A note from Will: If you haven’t already, I’d strongly recommend following Oren on Twitter and checking out his website.
This is seriously gold. Thank you so much!
Anyone else having issues with placing orders through Kohl’s lately? I tried to buy a few vacuums and all the orders cancelled immediately….
FWIW, I order a lot from Kohl’s. I too have gotten the zillion multiple boxes. But, I’ve never had an issue getting a replacement or refund from Kohl’s customer service. In fact, they’ve been more than helpful during the times something wasn’t right.
Also, check out Honey to save some time digging for promo codes: http://joinhoney.com
I did a post on it: http://outandout.boardingarea.com/get-honey-save-money-browser-extension-for-chrome/
Kohl’s lights it up like a Christmas tree – currently displays 25 codes, including free shipping and 30% off for Kohl’s cardholders.
Thanks as always for the great post!
Oh please do not use honey. They offer no more than 1% back. It is almost always worse than using any other portal.
The issue I have with Honey is that I have read elsewhere that they hijack your portal
Kohls likes to mess up your orders, by shipping one item and claiming they shipped all of your items in the same box. Even presented with evidence from the carrier that the weight and size of the package cannot possibly fit all the stuff they claim they sent, it still takes 2-3 months to get your money back.
They also use Lasership which sometimes claim they have delivered your order when in fact your security cameras will say that they never came. Packages sometimes come in sleeves leaving items comepletely smashed or dented. Sometimes they are so lazy they will slap a label on the product with out putting it in a box and ship it like that. How the heck can that be sold? or even gifted? lol
I had 3 occasions where they shipped my very expensive item to the wrong person and their $20 item to me. Good luck getting a refund in that case, The store will point you towards corporate and corporate will point you to the store to get your refund.
I order a lot of stuff from Kohl’s, but they almost always break up orders and send individual items in poly bags that get beat to hell and arrive smashed. So a single order for qty 6 will show up in 4+ poly bags with 4 of the 6 needing to be returned because it was smashed during transit. There’s no way Kohl’s is actually saving money with this method. Very rarely they will ship my stuff in an actual box, and even then they do a crappy packing job and sometimes items still get damaged.
I just experienced that today. Pretty frustrating.
I had a bunch of orders over the past few days, and most are showing 1 per shipment. I think what they’re doing is drop shipping from individual stores instead of from their warehouses.
And, I’ve had some shipments take 10+ days to go from Utah to Colorado and 14 days from MO to CO. That’s pathetic.
Received 4 Kohl’s shipments yesterday. 3 were in bags, 1 in a box. ALL of the items were returned to the store that shipped them to me. They were all ripped apart and covered in Scotch tape. 1 of them didn’t even have packaging, they just slapped a Kohl’s price tag on the item itself. All from a single order too, I ordered 8 of a single item and out of the 4 shipments I received yesterday I only received 5 out of the 8 items. These are small items, they should have been all shipped in a single box from the warehouse, not from individual stores dumping their opened and returned stock.
Why anybody would think this is acceptable is beyond me.
“The advantage to Gyft is that if you pay via PayPal and use a Chase Ink card you earn 5x Ultimate Rewards points.”
What does it mean to pay via PP _and_ use a Chase Ink card?
Choose your ink card as the credit card to pay with once you are logged in to paypal.
I don’t understand the PayPal & chase ink. Is PayPal considered office supplies getting you 5% ultimate rewards?
For some reason, Paypal Digital has been earning 5x https://www.doctorofcredit.com/gift-cards-on-ebay-5x-and-cash-advance-take-2-2/
does kohls charge coupon stack with gift cards? So can I get the 30% off on the entire purchase by paying for a part of it with a kohls charge card and pay for the rest with a discounted gift card
Yes, as long as part of the purchase is on the charge card, you are good.
Gyft is not on portals. Please update.
Currently ExtraBux offers 1% back at Gyft, not the 2% we are used to but it is there.
It does look like Gyft has been removed from most of the portals. However, they are still on the MPX app for 3/$. Still, you’re usually going to do much better buying from the secondary market at a discount.
Agreed but it depends on the time of the year. There was a point during the holiday season where you couldn’t find Target or Kohl’s gift cards at any discount, only face value. I would rather buy at face value from Gyft than from Raise.
Gyft gives 2% back if you use paypal with no portal anyway. You apply it to your next gyft card purchase at checkout.
https://www.gyft.com/points/
Link to their 2% explanation with paypal.
Chuck,
Your blog is fabulous. You will do all of us a favor, if you could move to a forum style website such vbulletin etc; These blogs are great but they user unfriendly.
Is your goal to make commenting easier?
I actually find forum style sites way more user unfriendly.
@Mark, huh?
I agree.