Layaway regaining popularity with shoppers during holiday season at some stores, online
Paul Ivice | TCPalm.com | Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Once apparently headed for extinction, layaway is regaining popularity among consumers.
For retailers, however, not so much.
Kmart, which has a store in Vero Beach, has offered layaway for more than 40 years. This holiday season, however, it’s become the focus of its advertising campaign.
Cindy Shinn, a manager at the store, said the response from customers “has been tremendous.”
Shinn said the amount of layaway purchases this year is probably about 50 percent more than in years past, so they began using a loft area in addition to a caged area they had been using to hold the items on layaway.
Kmart will stop taking layaway purchases after Dec. 11, and then resume in January.
The onslaught in the 1980s of credit cards, which allowed shoppers to bring home their purchases before paying for them, ushered out the layaway era. Even though consumer credit is no longer cheap or easy, most other large national retailers that dropped layaway, including Target and Walmart, said they have no plans to bring it back.
Though more retailers have jumped aboard the layaway bandwagon this holiday season, debit cards and cash are the most popular payment methods, said Kathy Grannis, a spokeswoman of the National Retail Federation in Washington, D.C.
However, layaway has taken root on the Internet.
Robert Holland, who started Chicago-based Lay-Away.com in 2002, said he thinks Kmart’s ad campaign has raised awareness among consumers for any business offering layaway. He said his Web site’s business is up about 50 percent over last year.
Lay-Away.com sells products directly, mostly electronics. Tallahassee-based eLayaway.com, which started three years ago, administers layaway programs online for 700 merchants, including Home Depot and Best Buy.
Only a few other Treasure Coast retailers offer layaway.
Sears, owned by the same parent company as Kmart, is offering layaway for the first time in 30 years, but only for fine jewelry.
Marshall’s in Jensen Beach and Vero Beach offers 30-day layaway. T.J. Maxx, a sister company of Marshalls, has layaway at its Port St. Lucie location, but not in Vero Beach or Stuart. Company spokeswoman Laura C. McDowell declined to discuss in detail the stores’ layaway strategies “for competitive reasons.”
Toys ’R’ Us Inc. offered layaway for the first time when it rolled out the “Big Gift” plan in October. Through that, customers could make holiday purchases early in the season when selection was best, company spokeswoman Katie Reczek said.
Toys ‘R’ Us has no minimum purchase amount for layaway but only certain items qualify.
Reczek said the company will evaluate the layaway program after the holidays to determine whether to offer it again.
TIPS FOR BUYING ON LAYAWAY
The Better Business Bureau of Southeast Florida and the Caribbean advises consumers to get everything in writing and offers the following checklist of questions to ask:
How much time do I have to pay off the item?
When are the payments due?
How much do I have to put down?
Are there any storage or service plan fees?
What happens if I miss a payment? Are there penalties? Does the item return to inventory?
Can I get a refund or store credit if I no longer want the item after making a few payments?
What happens if the item goes on sale after I’ve put it on layaway?
Does the retailer or third-party layaway service have a good Better Business Bureau rating?
