Posts Tagged ‘circuit city’

Have Circuit City gift cards? Go spend them NOW!!!

January 16th, 2009

Here’s news that should come to no surprise: Circuit City announced it will be liquidating the remainder of its US stores after failing to find a buyer or refinancing. You can read the news story here.

The warning I gave in October to spend your gift cards is even more urgent now. If you still have gift cards after they close their stores you are out of luck. As many of these liquidators have a habit to raising prices to discount them, you may want to go spend any remaining gift cards ASAP before the liquidators start running the show.

Is Circuit City going under? Spend your gift cards now!

October 15th, 2008

It may be time to use up any Circuit City gift cards you may still have. As detailed in this post at The Consumerist, between the stock’s collapse, the firing of its CEO, the loss of a takeover bid, and a huge quarterly loss, things aren’t looking too good for the chain. And now comes news that Circuit City lost a recommendation from a firm that advises manufacturers on whether to ship merchandise to retailers, signaling that there is a strong belief that Circuit City may no longer be able to pay its vendors, which may result in manufacturers refusing to sell product to them out of fear of not getting paid. This would start a quick spiral of the company down towards bankruptcy.

If the company goes bankrupt, consumers holding gift cards are considered creditors and the gift cards may become worthless. That’s what happened to customers with Sharper Image gift cards when that company declared bankruptcy earlier this year.

There have been other examples where customers were allowed to redeem their gift cards after a bankruptcy, but to be on the safe side it may be a good idea to unload those cards now.