Is Dilllards really closing?

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I was going to give some Dillards gift cards for Christmas, but I keep hearing that they will be closing after Christmas. I will change my plan if that is true. Can you find out? Also, while we are on the subject of closing, I also heard that Famous Dave’s and Johnny Carino’s will be closing after Christmas, too. Is there any truth to any of this? I have asked them directly and they say no, but I do not believe it! — Margie, Imperial County

I was informed that Dillards may be going out of business in January. Is this true or just another rumor? If so, where can I continue to make my credit card payments? — Janet, El Centro

Again, with the Dillards rumor. It keeps coming, and from multiple fronts. We’ve gotten e-mails, phone calls and numerous people in this office have heard it from friends and acquaintances locally.

We dealt with this in PROBE on Nov. 10, when a corporate spokeswoman out of the Little Rock, Ark., home office assured us the El Centro store was not on a list of closures.

Since then, though, we have heard from a few different people that store associates themselves are warning shoppers they will not be able to make returns after Christmas because the store will close.

Dillards

We took a couple of tactics on this. We first talked to the store manager, Armando, who referred all calls to Jim Benson, a director of advertising based out of Gilbert, Ariz.

The El Centro locations is “not listed as any of our stores closing,” Benson said. “It’s not even on the radar. I don’t know where this is coming from.”

While he acknowledged business is tough all over Imperial County from what he hears, Dillards is doing relatively well, he said.

We asked about a Nov. 21 press release from Dillards corporate about the layoff of 500 store associates nationwide and whether that would affect El Centro.

He said no, and that most of the layoffs were corporate or division jobs, meaning regional division offices. Benson said his staff has been wiped out, and that all his department’s advertising duties are now being done in Texas.

We also talked to someone in the kids’ shoe department of the El Centro store, posing as a customer. We asked if we made a purchase now, would we be able to return it after Christmas. That person said yes.

We then said we had heard from a store employee that no returns would be allowed because the store was closing. She said that was not true, at least from what she had heard.

To address the Famous Dave’s and Johnny Carino’s rumor, we had heard the same thing several weeks back and called.

From what we could gather from a very hostile telephone conversation with an unnamed spokesman was both restaurants as well as the now-closed Arby’s are all owned by the same group of investors under different limited liability companies. When Arby’s closed, the rumor began to surface that one of the other restaurants owned by the same company would fall. The spokesman said it’s not true before asking us don’t we have anything better to do.

That fact is with the state of the economy, it is likely that national retailers and restaurants around here will close — and soon — but there’s no way of knowing until after it happens.

The same rumor going rampant about Dillards is starting to surface about Macy’s and a slew of other stores in the Imperial Valley Mall.

Stores at our mall (and others’ malls) that are struggling mightily throughout the country (by that we mean, closing or massively downsizing) include: Lane Bryant, Gap, Foot Locker, Zales, Piercing Pagoda, The Disney Store, PacSun, Sprint and Nextel, J.C. Penney and KB Toys.

The reality is, this Valley (as well as the nation) is still in for a rocky ride, and there isn’t much we can do but wait it out.