Circuit City to Close 155 Stores Today?

I met a customer at Micro Center on Friday who said he heard Circuit City is getting ready to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy. I knew Circuit City had been having problems (including closing their Fairfax store), but I thought Chapter 7 sounded extreme. Now I read this news and realize he might have been right:

According to anonymous insider tips, Circuit City is closing 155 stores and withdrawing from 12 markets. This will be officially announced tomorrow at 8am, says our source. A scan we received of a letter distributed to CC employees helps corroborate the story. The tipsters say that store employees were told this morning. No information was provided at that time about severance pay. Employees in certain departments, like car installation, and Firedog, will likely be out of a job within 48 hours. Warranties will still be honored. A Consumerist commenter on this post says this story is true, and a few posts in Google Finance forums also attest to the store closing. One post there says the store closings will be effective 12/31/08. The news wouldn't be entirely unexpected as...

WSJ reported on Oct 20th that the retailer was considering closing 150 stores. On Friday, Oct 31, CC was warned it get delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because its stock price averaged below $1 for 30 days.

You can already start to see which stores are closing by seeing which ones don't show up in Circuit City's online store locator.

Circuit City is officially fried.

Much more after the link.

I've enjoyed shopping at Circuit City for many years now and hate to see them going through so much trouble. I will say many of their stores have seemed empty and run down recently. If the guy I met at Micro Center is right, you may see a lot of going out of business sales at Circuit City's around the country at Christmas time. This could make serious problems for Best Buy and other electronic stores as well.

(HT Gizmodo)