Thanks, bob12403. Didn't see this limitation. Looks pretty straightforward and blanket. If "Everything is on sale", then it's "No coupons" for everything. Hope those "going out of business sales" eclipse the coupons. Fortunately, I'm at the other end of the country at the moment, and the nearest Borders survives, so the 33% coupon will work.

Is there a general geographic pattern to the store closures? Are they hopscotching around among locations for whatever their reasons or does it look like clusters, or even whole regions?

As for leases, could be wrong, but I think with the Chapter 11 filing, all their leases are up for negotiation, with Borders able to get out if the landlord balks at taking a significant "haircut."

40% any one item through 3/7
 

online coupon code - BLW6742R
printable coupon here

in my experience, the reorganization has resulted in store closures, but borders.com and stores that are not closing continue to operate as before (accepting gift cards, coupons & borders bucks).

edited to add:
kipper's comment and a little further research suggests that it's not clear whether borders.com is honoring its point/cashback commitments, although i personally did receive borders bucks for purchases made both before and after the bankruptcy filing.

I'm currently waiting for points from a borders.com transaction to post. They showed as pending, then after the posted "award" date, moved to a blank status. I'm thinking that right now, borders.com is holding off on paying out anything like that.

Recent observations: Spent a few sessions at my nearest, closing Boston Borders. All employees are different. This was the case the day after it was announced the store would close, they said. The Seattle's Best closed that day. They've gone to 20%, 25% and 30% off in the weeks since, except for a few items. No coupons. An outstanding time to buy e-readers, 50% off on these items that were always excluded from coupons. Cruz, Kobo, Sony etc.

Visiting the next - surviving - store in downtown Boston, employees said none of their people had gone over to staff the closing store, and none of that store's former employees had come to work at the surviving store. This probably isn't surprising readers here.

itsme, it's a fairly commonly held view among employees (four, at three stores) that corporate had to close stores, so they chose to take the number of stores to reach the number that they needed by taking a certain number from each geographical area/city, to maintain a presence. Thus, a store that had to close in city A might have performed better than a store that survived in city B, but corporate needed a certain number of stores. Probably makes business sense, after all. But there's a good bit of strategic judgment in going against the rejected business case (the numbers).

I don't feel confident re the fate of the surviving Borders if the closures are for the expressed/implied reason. And as I walked by the still-vacant place where a similarly huge closed Barnes & Noble used to be in downtown Boston, I got thinking that there's not a lot of reason for confidence that more of this won't happen to them.

That is, unless news breaks that there were other reasons for Borders's fate. Then again, I guess this is blah blah blah, given what happened to their stock.

If you're observing a closure, have I missed anything or got anything wrong?

The ordered collapse
 

"28 more stores"* announced in-house 3.19.11, and the signs went up today. The one where I shop in San Rafael, CA, among them. (My above posts have been about the one in Boston's Back Bay.) The place where they have kept trying to sell me the upgrade, and I say no, and they say, "May I ask why not?" I hesitate, and they say, "Our store's very profitable, and they told us, 'No way.'"

None of those people are there today, and the Seattle's Best is cordoned off.

Who was it, Cassandra, who said, "I have seen the future, and can do nothing about it"?

:( :( :( :( :(


* per a manager.

And the manager said they expect the liquidators in in the next day or two. She doesn't know what that meant, just that they were told this. Could it be a new m.o. if they don't expect to be able to sell or redistribute the inventory in time?

I also saw employees numbering and taping lined slips on each bookcase - something I didn't see the first round in Boston, though I could have missed it while here on the best coast.

*****************
BTW, I do see the 33% off coupon banner to the right-- just like the one I left on the table today.

Looking at the store locator page for my next available shot to use this weekend's 40%-er, it looks like the only stores that will be left standing in the whole Bay Area are one (!) in SF proper and one in Emeryville. So much for the "presence" hypothesis above.

And now that the finale is in sight, unless Barnes & Noble does things very differently with their finances, I can't see how their apparently similar business model can survive (huge rented footprint, huge inventory, extremely elastic demand, not necessarily in this order).

The Borders nearest to me is going out of business. I went in today and bought a couple booke. At checkout I was given a 50% off coupon to be used on one item at an open store. Valid until May 7th. I think this is sort of a last hurrah, since they said this store will be closed by the end of the week.

Three out of four Borders stores have closed/are closing in my area. Not one of the three stores organized the selling off of inventory in the same way. The first Borders store that closed excluded from the sell-off all Penguin books and magazines. The second and third store discounted magazines at 40% from day one of the announcement. However, store two discounted red tagged "sale" books to $1 each, whereas store three gave an additional 10% off red tagged books. All stores refused borders coupons, and I have yet to see any of my purchases at the sell-off credited to my rewards card. Hmmm.

40% any one item through 4/18
 

online code: BJF0427Y

40% off any one item through 5/16
 

online code: BUA8091F
printable coupon for in-store here

alas, the glory days of using borders gift cards to buy borders gift cards through bigcrumbs (4.8% cashback!) are gone. it was extra fun when i found out that gift card purchases earned borders bucks too, but i knew that could never last.

As the announcement has just been made that the last light in Boston will go out next month, employees are hearing that it's all down to lease negotiations. "Thirteen stores will close in this wave, 51 are on the line if they can't get serious breaks on their leases. This leaves 300-something Borders stores". Same line is given in Santa Rosa, CA: "The reason that the last bunch closed, even though they were told they (employees re their own stores) were very profitable, and wouldn't close, was because the landlords wouldn't budge.

40% any one item online code:BJW6284M
printable coupon here
expires 6/27

20% "most items" in your purchase*

http://www.bordersmedia.com/coup/201...id=SL_20110712

Code for online is BVK9537T

*Any item with a current price lower than 20% off list price will ring at the lower price.Valid 7/12/11 through 7/14/11