Bake Me Some Cookies Instead
I have gotten this e-mail a few times over the past several days from well meaning friends. It indicates that a lot of the gift cards that you may have recevied in the past, or may get in the near future may be worthless unless they are used quickly.
It goes on to give a list of the stores that are either going out of business or curtailing their market presence in the coming months.
As I scanned down through the list I was rather apathetic. Call me strange (in a good way), but I don't know what most of these stores even sell and I have not visited any of them in the past 5 years (with the exception of Home Depot, I live there on the weekends).
I suppose that shop-a-holics may be in for a bit of belt tightening in the coming economic downturn, but based on this list, I will barely notice it.
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For all you gift card lovers, be sure not to buy any at the following stores. Many are reducing the number of stores or are going out of business completely. Most often, gift cards are not honored once the company has declared bankruptcy.
Stores that informed the Security Exchange of closing plans between October 2008 and January 2009.
Circuit City stores
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine's to close 150 store nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down all stores
J. Jill closing all stores
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores, more to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing down
Levitz closing down remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January.
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ (New Brunswick)
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley Closing all stores
Pacific Sunware closing stores
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stores
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Loews to close down some stores
Dillard's to close some stores.
Cash, never goes out of business ...errrr, wait, lemme look a the U.S. dollars worth today.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote about my favorite subject,
ReplyDeleteSHOPPING!
At least Bed Bath and Beyond is still okay- for now. I just really, really hate Wal- Mart.
ReplyDeleteI hate shopping so I'm not too sad...as long as Eddie Bauer keeps the catalog portion of the business I won't cry at all.
ReplyDeleteWent to the mall today and counted all the stores you had mentioned as going out of business.
ReplyDeleteWhich is fine really. We didn't actually have the chance or energy to go shopping at this mall.
We went because well, they have an indoor playard (complete with fake tree house made out of styrofoam and this wierd lacqured shiny coating).
But yeah! Sitting and watching the kids go mental for 45 minutes in an enclosed area.
Like a free babysitter almost, this play yard.
Wait, wait, that wasn't my point.
Point is, nothing is really worth buying if you think twice about it.
At least at most of these stores.
:)
Holley
Oh, and about the christmas card thing. I tried a billion times to do cards, and I just never had the attention span to get them all in the mail in a timely fashion. Indeed, I'm not huge on receiving them, either- I'd rather my friends/ family buy me a cup of coffee (anywhere but Starbucks).
ReplyDeleteThanks for the list of stores. It was more extensive than I would have thought. I like the idea of buying the coffee for a friend and skipping the "gift" part of the season.
ReplyDelete