Will the End of Lay-away Be Wal-mart's Downfall?

Will the downfall of Wal-mart soon be upon us? If they do away with the law-away department I believe they will be losing a lot of customers. I have to agree with the article written by Brandy Ogden - Wal-mart Layway Department.

Every year people start their back to school and Christmas shopping a few months early so they can place it on lay-away and have that time to make payments. Now that option is being taken away at the Wal-mart stores. I have done my shopping at Wal-Mart for years and every year I use the Wal-Mart layaway for my Christmas shopping. I have even used the Wal-Mart lay-away when I wanted to redecorate my bathroom. I put all the things I needed such as the shower curtain, throw rugs, curtains, and bathroom set on law-away until I could afford to pay it off. This way I new the items I wanted would be there when I was ready for them. People depend on Wal-mart's lay-away program when it comes to holiday shopping. Someone on a fixed income might not be able to do much shopping at Wal-Mart now because they won't have anyway of getting the items and paying for them on payments. Several customers I am sure will be switching where they do a lot of their shopping for holidays and back to school. Wal-Mart thinks they will save money by eliminating the layaway department, but I have to think they will lose money in the long run when all their loyal customers that depended on the lay-away to do their shopping will be finding other places to shop. Wal-marts said they are going to offer alternative financing programs to people. Well I hope they plan to include a program for low income or people that have bad credit. Sure we could use credit cards to do our shopping and be able to make payments on the items like we did with the layaway but if we did that we would have to pay interest.

I don't know about others but this is one thing I don't want to have more of: credit card debt. That is a big reason I used the Wal-Mart layaway year after year. Another store that doesn't offer layaway is Target, and I love Target but I can't do any major shopping there because of their lack of a lay-away program. They offer great products and I would love to do more holiday shopping there but this isn't possible, it soon will be the same with Wal-Mart. Even this holiday season there will be problems they are allowing people to use the lay-away, but they have to be picked up by Dec 8.I usually didn't pick up my law-away until closer to Christmas as I am sure many others didn't either. I have to agree with Brandy Ogden when she said people are just getting by each month. This is absolutely the truth. With the cost of gas and heating our homes so high, lay-away was some people's only way of doing any holiday shopping.

I would like to have the people at Wal-mart that decided to remove the layaway program come on Christmas morning and see the look on the children faces whose parents couldn't afford to do as much shopping this year and there is only one or two presents under the tree. Wal-Mart has already been through so much bad publicity with the way they treat their employees now they are going to do the same to their customers. They really need to rethink shutting down the layaway program, many people depend on it each year to help in doing their holiday and back to school shopping .Not to mention birthdays and other special occasions.

Join me in telling Wal-Mart your opinion of them shutting down the lay-away department. Visit their corporate Web site and leave your feedback. Maybe if they get enough complaints they will reconsider. You can also write them a letter and send it to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Bentonville, Arkansas 72716-8611.They also have a phone number if you prefer to call and voice your opinion on Wal-Mart closing their lay-away program, it is 1-800-WAL-MART.Lets make them understand how closing the layaway department affects the customer.