Courtesy of geocam20000

Recently I received an email about closing stores and since I participate in quite a few reward programs and found this information useful I thought it could be useful for you as well. Although an email states about US retailers many of them are doing business in Canada, so if you find a store in the list below and you have a credit in this store or gift card or accumulated points through reward programs you may want to rethink when you actually want to spend it. Also here is a link to the article I find very informative on the subject - "Store Closings".

It seems there are lots of stores that are closing due to the "recession" and the fact that people are not shopping. If you have any "gift cards" from these stores, make sure you use them, or you will lose them! Watch those store money cards and gift cards.. and credit slips! Stores that informed the Security Exchange of closing plans between October 2008 and January 2009. 

1. Circuit City stores... most recent (? how many)
2. Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide are to be shuttered
3. Lane Bryant,, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine's to close 150 store nationwide
4. Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
5. Cache will close all stores
6. Talbots closing down all stores
7. J. Jill closing all stores
8. GAP closing 85 stores
9. Footlocker closing 140 stores more to close after January
10. Wickes Furniture closing down
11. Levitz closing down remaining stores
12. Bombay closing remaining stores
13. Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January.
14. Whitehall closing all stores
15. Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
16. Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
17. Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
18. Macys to close 9 stores after January
19. Linens and Things closing all stores
20. Movie Galley Closing all stores
21. Pacific Sunware closing stores
22. Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
23. Sprint/ Nextel closing 133 stores
24. JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
25. Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
26. Wilson Leather closing down all stores
27. Sharper Image closing down all stores
28. K B Toys closing 356 stores
29. Lowes to close down some stores
30. Dillard's to close some stores.

Please let me know if you know more about stores to be closed in a near future.

“Points.com is the revolutionary new service that helps you get the most from the reward programs to which you ALREADY BELONG.”

It’s quite fascinating when someone is coming up with the bright idea and put it into the business formation. Well, Points.com is just about that. I’m pretty sure that many of us were thinking about this type of service for a long time. I don’t know about you guys but I have 6 reward cards in my wallet and it is quite challenging to maintain 6 online accounts (for the balance, for the redemption history and so on). So to have all six accounts accessible from one place would shorten my evening accounts exercise from 10 to 2 minutes.  Make it short Points.com offers exactly that. The downside is that they don’t have all reward programs yet available there. From the big ones I noticed: Aeroplan, HBC Rewards, Esso Extra. But something says to me that it’s a matter of time until majority of reward programs will be there. It’s definitely a channel.

I had a chance to participate in one successful business with very similar idea and that makes me very excited about this new service.

Did you find extraordinary service offer recently?

Club Sobeys card

Club Sobeys is one of the newest reward programs. Sobeys started the program which was long time overdue last month. The card is available in Sobeys stores but I did an online submission for the card. The reason is very simple – with identity theft recently increasing with a speed of light I decided it will be safer if I will deliver my personal information in a secure environment. Any way I received my card in a week or so within my submission. It arrived along with two convenient key ring tags. And tell you the truth I loved the idea, because my wallet already packed with membership cards, so it is very useful to have it on the key ring rather in the wallet.

Let’s take a look how good or bad the program.

1. For each dollar spent at Sobeys you get a point, so far so good.
2. You can redeem your points to Aeroplan Miles.

That’s pretty much it. At this point it looks like the best deal you can get out of reward programs available at least dollar spent/point ratio.
Are you reward program member? Which one and what do you like about it?