Posts Tagged ‘gift-cards’
We are getting some new linens and were looking at the Sferra line for the house over the week or so and it dawned on us that we still have a few christmas gift cards laying around the house that we haven't used yet. I thought I would send a quick reminder out to everyone. Use them up, remember we seen a few stores close their doors over the past few months and it would suck being stuck with a nice gift card that was worth nothing. If you are planning to hold onto them read the back of the card. Some of them have special terms about the value they hold over time. Happy shopping!
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I heard an interesting story yesterday on The Howard Stern Show. Robin was talking about how a new rash of store closings were going to make those gift cards you are holding onto worthless. If you have been holding onto some gift cards you might want to check into store closings to see if you have any. Once that store is gone you have yourself a piece of plastic worth nothing.
If the chain itself isn't closing then you might want to make sure the actual store near you isn't one of the ones being closed. It wouldn't be worth your while to have to spend $30 on gas to redeem a $25 card. If it happens you can always sell them on ebay but that's a pain. Do some investigating and do your shopping a bit early.
Here is a link to a thread at my chat forums The Labrador Retriever Chat Board. And here is the Snopes Stores Closing page for all of you Spooky Mulder Types.
Here is a partial list of some of the happenings:
- The Ann Taylor chain of women's clothing stores is expecting to close 25 Ann Taylor and 39 Loft outlets in 2008 (out of approximately 960 stores), with another 53 store closure by the end of 2009.
- The Caché chain of women's specialty apparel stores closed 14 underperforming outlets, but is still has 295 stores across the country and is still opening new stores.
- The Charming Shoppes chain of plus-size women's apparel
stores has closed 150 of its approximately 2,360 outlets.
- The Circuit City chain of retail electronics stores filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2008.
- The CompUSA chain of consumer electronics stores was sold to the Gordon Brothers Group restructuring firm in December 2007 and began liquidating all 103 of its outlets in January 2008.
- The Dillard's department store chain closed 20 outlets in 2008 and said it expects more store closures in 2009.
- The Disney Store chain was reacquired by the Walt Disney Co in March 2008; Disney has since closed 98 of its 322 North American stores.
- The Eddie Bauer chain of casual apparels stores shut down 27 outlets in the first quarter of 2008 and planned to close a few more stores by the end of the year.
- The Ethan Allen chain of home furnishings stores closed 12 retail design centers and two service centers in 2008.
- The Foot Locker chain of shoe stores chain closed 274 outlets (out of more than 3,700) in 2007 and another 60 in the first quarter of 2008, with more such closures likely.
- Whitehall Jewelers acquired the remnants of the Friedman's and Crescent chains in early 2008 after that combined company entered bankruptcy, then Whitehall itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2008 and began liquidating and closing all 373 of its remaining stores.
