Customer Service
Kookai is my favorite brand store but there are no Kookai stores in California where I live so whenever I go to Tokyo on business I squeeze in a quick visit to a Kookai store to see what they've got. On a visit to Tokyo year ago I had a chance between appointments to visit the Kookai branch inside Mitsukoshi in Ebisu and I found a beautiful top for my daughter (for a not-so-cheap price), and then I dashed off to a nearby shoe store before jumping in a taxi for my next appointment.
When I got back home I discovered I didn't have my Kookai package! I thought I must have left it in the taxi and so I thought that's the way it goes...
Well, this year on a trip to Tokyo I had a chance to go back to the shoe store. I told the sales lady that I live in California but make it a point to visit her store every chance I get and the sales lady remembered me from my visit last year! She said, "Oh yes, and you left your last purchase here, didn't you?" She told me that when she discovered I had left my Kookai package in her store, she ran over to Mitsukoshi to try to find me but I had left. She went to Kookai to try to get my address from my credit card but no good because I live in the US. So she left my package with Mitsukoshi's Lost & Found.So now that I was back, the sales lady called Mitsukoshi to see if they still had my package, which I doubted since it was all over a year ago. Mitsukoshi said they were happy to hear from me and that they would check. I was just happy to find out what had happened.
That evening I got a call from a Mitsukoshi guy, who said they couldn't find the package and apologized as only can be done in Japanese. I kept telling him it was OK, it was my fault for leaving the package behind, but he said that because Lost & Found had accepted it, it was Mitsukoshi's responsibility. He told me they had spent the afternoon calling every Kookai store in the country to find a replacement top, but no good because it was out of season. He then, ever so humbly, asked me if I would be so kind as to let him come to my house to let him reimburse me for the cost of the top! I had to tell him it would be easier all around if he would just mail it to my home in California. Which he did, in crisp US banknotes.
-Mie Yaginuma