So we ordered some clothes for Jaime from Kmart.com. It was on clearance, so why not, right?

Here’s the experience:

One pair of pants was canceled off the order, even though it was listed as in stock. This is 2007. Can we please get accurate stocking? I don’t want to advocate some sort of federal law requiring truth-in-stocking, and luckily I don’t need to. We already have truth-in-advertising laws, and those laws need to be enforced against companies that accept orders on items of which they do not have adequate stock to fill the order.

Shipping was going to be the same even with the canceled pair of pants, which made no sense, so I emailed the company telling them that I expected adjusted shipping for the now smaller order. They never responded, but did reduce the shipping by 75 cents. OK fine. An email stating that they adjusted it would have been nice, but I’d rather have an adjustment with no email than an email with no adjustment.

So the order arrives here in Savannah after a few days via UPS, coming from Virginia. We take the box upstairs and Jaime opens it so she can check out the clothes.

First shirt, nice. It’s a little black sweater that apparently I had picked out. Jaime doesn’t like the beads (she wouldn’t have ordered it if she knew it had beads), but hey, it was $5.

Second shirt, a white stretchy thing. It’s nice as well. It looks good on her, and she likes it.

Third and final item, a pair of pants. She picks them up out of the box, and immediately knows they are the wrong size. How does she know? Well, Jaime is like a size 6. These pants are a size 14! Holy crap. She could fit her whole body in one leg of these pants.

So I call Kmart’s toll free. I explain the situation to the lady who answered the phone, and she then transferred me to the right department. Oddly, though, she kept saying “Thank you for calling Sears” something something. Strange.

Well, the next lady I talk to is Brenda. She says we have two options. One is to take the pants to a store, which I shot down before she finished. I bought these online and paid for shipping. I am not covering the cost of gas, eating up my free time, and taking the risk that is involved in driving to Kmart and back. I paid for shipping.

The other option is to wait 8-10 days for a UPS pickup. Then, once they receive the giganti-pants, there would be another period of waiting– I think she said up to 10 days– for a credit. If I wanted a replacement, I would have to re-order and pay a full shipping charge instead of a pro-rated shipping charge.

What kind of an option is that? I explained that they have an obligation to correct the mistake. I placed an order and they took the money out of my account. If I am to be required to place a new order, pay full shipping, and wait up to 4 weeks (surely they meant business days) to get my money back, I am going to send back the whole order and not place any more orders in the future. I told her as much, and told her that I didn’t appreciate the way they handle their own mistakes.

She put me on hold and came back on the line and said that they would credit the pants, shipping, and tax. OK, fine, no pants, but no huge delay in getting my money back and no temporary double-payment so I can reorder to compensate for the fact that whoever or whatever packed our box cannot distinguish the difference between a size 6 and a size 14 by look and feel.

Overall, I’m still disappointed. Jaime wanted these pants, we ordered them, paid for them. Kmart has them, shipped the wrong ones, and won’t ship the right ones unless I pay them a second time, and then loan them the original amount for up to a month.

I’m not planning on any more purchases from Kmart.com in the future, and I would recommend the same to my friends and family.

Don’t you hate pants?