Have any gift cards from Borders stashed away in your desk? You might want to fish them out and buy some books with them — sooner rather than later.

Borders began liquidating on Friday, and is expected to shut down its remaining 399 stores by September. The company says it is honoring gift cards.

Just remember to be nice when visiting a store. The Consumerist has featured reports in which Borders employees describe ugly scenes in which customers are outraged that the merchandise sold by the liquidating chain isn’t cheap enough.

But some consumer experts say they wouldn’t wait too long to use the gift cards. It’s best in these sorts of situations to act quickly, and buy online if you can’t make it to a store anytime soon, said Andrea Woroch, a consumer savings expert on the Web site Kinoli. Shoppers, she said, “are well advised to use up their balances before it’s too late.

Have you used your Borders gift card?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=905801651b96f84679f1b4328af8d423