Gift Card Beware!
I've gotten this same email about five times now, so I wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you tend to give gift cards around the holidays, you need to be careful that the cards will be honored after the holidays. Stores that are planning to close after Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though the cards will be worthless January 1. There is no law preventing them from doing this. Below is a partial list of stores that you need to be cautious about:
Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine's to close 150 stores nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down specialty stores
J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
Pacific Sunwear (also owne d by Talbots)
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores mo re 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 (aff) 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
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 stor~s
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Loews to close down some stores
Dillard's to close some stores
(If any of these stores are wrong, let me know so I can correct it. Snopes has confirmed some of these)
14 thoughts on “Gift Card Beware!”
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Wow… I had no idea so many stores were closing! Especially J.Jill! That's horrible!
Some of those places deserve to go out of business. Circuit City is the epitome of evil, after they sold me a defective stove and refused to make good on it some years ago. I had to get the manufacturer involved to get it fixed. I swore that I would never buy so much as a flashlight battery there again. I rejoiced when I heard they were having to close down.
Lane Bryant's closing of stores does not surprise me. They are supposed to be a store for plus-sized women, yet most of the clothes they sell now are for toothpicks, would look ridiculous on fat chicks. Just because they make skin-tight jeans and belly-baring shirts in a size 22 does NOT mean it's a good idea for me to wear them. I stopped shopping there when they stopped making stuff hat looks good on larger women like me.
Thanks for posting this list. 😀
Christine, I hate Circuit city too. They won't' talk to me if Bill's with and they follow you around the store.
I also think the same thing about Lane Bryant too. I swear some of the stuff they have in their stores you are like "What?" They do have good bras though so I am hoping they don't close my local one.
WOW, that's crazy! I didn't know about half of these places closing. It's so sad really 🙁
Despite problems with individual stores (yep, I have my share of horror stories about some of these stores too) it's very depressing to realize how desperate the economic situation is likely to become.
Due to the economic crisis, many of the stores have been closed down and it's definitely not a great phenomena indeed…
OMG, I still have a few gift card from Wilson Leather…
I think we'll see more store in this list after Christmas. Retailers are scared of holiday sales.
It's time to save not to spend. 😛
um…. Pretty scary. Most of these are stores that are quite familiar.
I know it's hard times but I often wonder if the internet may be a partial contributer to closing stores. We all DO shop online.
A agree.
Better price, free shipping, no tax.
Stumbled across your site by accident but very informative and although i am in UK not the states the same warnings are valid here and only yesterday woolworths went into administarton.
Oh my.. better spend those gift cards.. 😕
Thanks for the info. I returned something to Mark's Work Wearhouse after christmas last year and when I used it last week it only had 25% of the value on it. I guess I should've known but damn. That should be illegal. What ever happened to Gift Certificates? 'memba those?
I had no idea so many stores were closing!
One benefit of shopping online is that most likely, even if brick and mortar stores are closing down, the online stores will remain open. To get deals any time of year, it's a good idea to search for promo codes for whatever brand you are looking for in Google and you can save a ton of money!