[kaylar]

I wonder if they saw packed malls and ASSumed there were shoppers, without noticing that the amount of bags the mall walkers were carrying were few or none, or at least fewer than previous years?

I can tell you I hit one of the biggest malls in the KC metro area the first weekend in December, and it was NOT packed, but pretty sparsely populated-quite a few empty stores, too. I also was at a huge mall in the Chicago metro area the first weekend of November (possibly too early for Christmas shopping) and it was a Dead Zone. There was hardly anyone else in the mall-seriously.

[wbill]

I went to an outlet mall here in NC, the Saturday afternoon before XMas. Parked right in front, there weren't more than a dozen or so cars in the lot.

The people inside were *buying*....not shopping...but there weren't many of them.

I also hit a local Target the weekend after XMas, looking for sales. Had the store to myself. Workers were just hanging around the registers talking....nothing to do.

I think that retailers are going to get hammered this year.

[fightinJAG]

This weekend I wandered over to Wally World because I was interested in how much interest was being shown in the much ballyhooed iPhone offer.

Answer: None.

There were two guys in ponytails standing around behind the counter bored. I asked them how many iPhones they had sold at the “great deal” of $197 (plus contract etc.).

Answer: None.