Wally World doing away with layaway

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060914/ap_on_bi_ge/wal_mart_layaway

Maybe this belongs someplace else, but I'm putting it here because in my admittedly limited experience with layaway at my store, I found it to be a pain in the ass and more trouble than it was worth.

We had a whole gondola in the backroom reserved for layaways, which meant that the rest of the backroom was even more cram-packed and unorganized than it usually is. Plus we needed people to go in back and bring up layaway whenever people came to pick them up (and the items were never organized in any order, they were just thrown randomly on the shelves, so it could take a while to find the correct item)

Then we also had to be constantly checking dates and returning stuff to the floor if it wasn't picked up on time. As I recall, a fair amount of layaways were returned to stock because they weren't picked up in time.

So I'm interested in hearing from Wal-Mart employees what they think of this. Somehow I doubt they will miss layaway too much.

[Crazyredhead]

I know that I am going to miss layaway. I use it all the time, all year long. I'm getting ready to start some Christmas shopping now and the layaway is a great thing. I guess I am one of the few that actually pay and pick up what I put on layaway. This is going to hurt the people that use the layaway the way that it is intended to be used.

[Crosshair]

I don't use layaway at my store, but I use it at most of the sporting goods stores in town. It would really suck if they stopped doing layaway. Though I always put large ticket items on layaway, not the cheap stuff. It will be nice to get that bin space to use for other, more important stuff.

[EmiOfBrie]

Oh god, I can hear the SCs now.....

"WHYYYYYYY don't you have LAAAAAYAWAAAAAY??? You had it last week!!"

[Crosshair]

"WHYYYYYYY don't you have LAAAAAYAWAAAAAY??? You had it last week!!"
Want to know what is going to make it even better. We are advertising the fact that we are stopping layaway so people know about it. People WILL NOT be able to but Blitz stuff (Day after Thanksgiving) on layaway. I can just imagine the whining we are going to get and the bad checks people are going to try and pass. Good thing I work in the corner of the store away from these people.

[Rapscallion]

"WHYYYYYYY don't you have LAAAAAYAWAAAAAY??? You had it last week!!"

"We laid it away..."

Rapscallion

[Ringtail Z28]

I used to work in the layaway department when I worked at Wal-Mart. It used up virtually all of the backroom space, and it required extra trailers around the holidays. So that could be one reason they're getting rid of it, so they can have an actual stock room, rather than just layaway space. They're probably gonna start pushing their credit card harder too, claiming how credit is better than layaway.

[Crosshair]

"We laid it away..."
I'm gona save that one and tell it to the people in Layaway. Much better than my idea of, "She broke a leg so we had to shoot her.";)

[Dreamstalker]

I hear that last year, some sellers on ebay used layaway to basically stockpile the hot toys (buy a few, put the rest on layaway and cancel if they didn't sell as well as people hoped).

One person did that with about 400 of the new furbies :eek: