I placed an order last night. It's now in the shipping soon stage and my gift card was charged for the entire amount. As of right now, Borders is still in cahoots with Amazon.

Sorry for the false alarm.

I don't get what connection you were trying to make.

Even if the Borders/Amazon partnership ended--or even if it NEVER existed--how would that have ANY bearing on a gift card value that you could presumably use in a Borders B&M store?

Isn't there an 800-number on the back? I'm sure if you call, you'll see your gift card is fine and dandy.

I think what Peep meant is that he tried to check his Borders balance on the Amazon site and he couldn't get his balance on the Amazon site.

Only squids use Border gift cards at Borders.

Well, according to this USA Today article, it now sounds like the change won't be happening until the end of April. Looks like I still have time to accumulate some Borders credit for an HD TV from Amazon.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...ownloads_N.htm

By the end of April, Borders plans to launch its own website and take back control of Borders.com from Amazon, which has been operating the Borders site for nearly seven years. Under the arrangement, orders on Borders' website are filled by Amazon with Amazon's inventory and staff. Amazon gets credit for the sales, though Borders gets a percentage it won't disclose.

End of April works for me. I guess I'm one of the few who have only bought DVDs & books from Borders.com(Amazon). I'bve never built up more than a $150 store credit there and it's lawys been across multiple cards. Any tips for consolidating store credit?

Take all of your cards to a Borders B&M and ask them if you could put all of the credit onto one card. If you're uneasy asking for that, then just buy a new gift card and when they ring it up, pull out your other gift cards for payment.

Technically, that's the only way it can be processed. There is no merge/add value function in the cash register.

You're buying a new card and paying for it with the old cards.

why dont you just buy something with all the cards, keep the receipt, and then return it the next day. At least its less complicated.

April...awesome. Still have some unopened DVDs to dump.

Less complicated than buying a gift card? Nothing is easier than buying a gift card.

Just total up all your gift cards beforehand. Go to the cashier and ask to buy a $xx.xx gift card, and then pay with all your current gift cards.

No hassle, no returns to deal with, no explanation that will probably just confuse the help.

I called Borders Customer Service to see if they had any update on the timeframe for the switchover. I spoke to a supervisor who all but confirmed that it will be happening in April, but no exact date yet. I expressed my concern about Amazon pre-orders that wouldn't ship (and be charged to a Borders gift card) until after the switchover. He said that there should be a mechanism to still have those orders charged to your Borders gift card. He took my contact information and said he would follow up with more information in the next couple weeks. If not, he said call back in early April to get an update. I'll pass along any information I get.

^

Thanks for the update. Has anyone tried a receiptless return to Borders recently? I was just curious to see if they still have the same return policy.

(Fortune) -- Unable to sell many books, Borders (BGP) has bowed to its activist investors and enlisted bankers to help sell the company.

The big-box book chain says it has lined up $42.5 million in financing from major stakeholder Pershing Square Capital to keep its doors open. The company also killed its dividend and has hired JPMorgan and Merrill Lynch to explore options. Borders' shares plummeted 21% Thursday on word of the deal.

The news comes ahead of the Ann Arbor-based retailer's earnings release expected at the end of trading Thursday. And if rival Barnes & Noble's (BKS, Fortune 500)disappointing numbers are any indication, Borders isn't going to have good fourth-quarter financials to report.

As the No.2 book retailer, Borders has been crushed by its larger ever-present competitor Barnes & Noble, as well as increased wins by discounters like Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) and Costco (COST, Fortune 500). The company has also been vexed on the online sales front. After what some publishing industry observers note was a disastrous ecommerce effort in the late 1990s, Borders threw in its lot with a less-than-lucrative partnership with Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500). The company has since said it plans to unveil its own Web site next month. The current version is still in beta.

Accelerated decline. But the speed of Borders' collapse is shocking coming amid attempted turnaround efforts engineered by CEO George Jones last year, a move that included the introduction of kiosks to tap the digital media market with sales of MP3s and audiobooks. In September, Jones told investors on an earnings call that he was confident that the plan was on the "right path" to generate "sustainable sales and earnings growth for the company beginning in 2008."

This abrupt strategic turnaround coincides with the arrival on Borders' board of Pershing Square Capital partner Richard McGuire in January. Investor activist Bill Ackman's shop Pershing Square holds a 26% stake in Borders and is thought to be the catalyst for the seeking-buyers strategy. Ackman and his representative did not return calls for comment.

Ackman may be best known as the investor who essentially convinced Wendy's (WEN) to spin off its pancake chain Tim Hortons (THI) in an IPO in 2006.

Part of Pershing Square's financing agreement includes the sale of overseas subsidiaries. Pershing has agreed to buy Borders' Paperchase chain of paper stores and units in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. That deal however, requires that Borders first seek buyers for those businesses before Pershing steps in with a floor price of $125 million.

$1B in debt. As of November, Borders was operating in the red with a $222 million accumulated net loss on $2.4 billion in sales for the first three quarters of 2007, according to the most recent filing. The company carries about $1 billion in total debt and was down to $65 million in cash as of the third quarter.

No immediate buyout candidates seem obvious at this point. Barnes & Noble would likely relish the opportunity to eliminate its closest rival, but antitrust regulators could find some issues with that.

Looking ahead to the financial report later today, analsyts expect Borders to post an adjusted profit $1.42 a share for the fourth quarter. That is down from the year-ago earnings of $1.61 a share. Sales in the busy holiday quarter are to have hit about $1.4 billion, which is down from the $1.52 billion level in the same period last year.

I was going to blame myself for this, but then again Borders' generous return policy was its own creation.

i wonder if their gift cards will go bad like sharper image if they cant sell themselves.

I just ordered one from Discover Card last week, so I hope not!

I have a $20 Borders gc. How do I redeem it online via amazon? (I have no clue!)

Go to www.borders.com and check out as you would at Amazon. If you're already registered at Amazon, then you're all set. Just enter your gift card number in the box on the next to last page of the checkout process.

I'll always have fond memories of Borders since I worked there when they were spun off by Kmart and reaped financial rewards well in excess of what a minimum wage type job should warrant. That being said it's been a long downhill slide. I was there when they mothballed the old website and I find it hard to believe that the next iteration of Borders.com will be any better and it will likely be dead within months if a sale goes through.

Oh, and since when is Tim Horton's a pancake chain? Nice reporting there Fortune, way to score points in Canada.

Not much more information to add. I called the supervisor back that I had spoken with earlier. He said that their transition training had been delayed a couple times, but was scheduled to start this Monday (4/14). This makes me think that the move away from Amazon may not happen until sometime in May.

He expects to have additional information after the training. He opened a ticket on the issue of how they will handle pre-orders after the transition occurs, and he'll be adding updates to that ticket as he gets more information. As always, I'll post what I learn.

You have to buy at least one item on the borders web site in order to buy stuff at amazon and use the borders gift card. Doesn't apply to you as much with just the $20, but just wanted to be thorough.

I just go to the "Amazon" site through Borders. I only buy Blu-rays and such anyway...

Thanks for the update, bhauge.