If you have gift cards to Circuit City, use them now. The whole chain is liquidating their assets and going out of business. Over 30,000 employees will be losing their jobs. Not sure how many people work at the Peoria store in Westlake Shopping Center. A customer service rep I talked to guessed that they employed 80 people, which seems high to me.
Estimated closing date is March 31, but could be sooner if they sell all their merchandise.
I guess I should have held off on that high-def TV purchase.
Another Big Box bites the dust. We have no clue how well (or not) the Peoria Circuit City was doing, but it will be gone anyway.
What makes you think those gift cards still work?
Anyway, my nephew once was employed there, but saw the writing on the wall and bolted to a better sales gig. Hopefully, this place won’t curl up and die.
I used to work at Circuit City (in Peoria) and wanted to point out a couple things:
1) 80 is probably a reasonable number – as long as you realize it includes a lot of ~20hr/week people. When I worked there there were over 100 employees but the company reduced it sales force to cut costs (bad move in my opinion).
2) It is being widely reported that the Gift Cards will be accepted and it makes sense as everyday consumers are usually given some of the highest rights in bankruptcy proceedings. A somewhat interesting tangent is the service plans they sell (a lot of people refer to them as extended warranties) – these will be honored, this is because these are a contracted service – the company actually responsible for those claims is not in bankruptcy.
Circuit City has been in trouble for several years. Not surprised at all to read of their demise.
I read about this last Friday and decided to check it out on Saturday, the first day of the liquidation sale (everything as of right now is 10% off or more). I spoke to a sales rep there who said that Saturday was “busier than Black Friday”, and it was indeed jammed. Gift cards will still work.
He also mentioned that even if the store runs out of stock on something, in most cases there are still plenty of items in their warehouses and they will continue getting shipments.