Canadian TRU finds a buyer

[joshimus]

Originally Posted by Chigimus

You're half right. Yes, TRU gets new product later than Walmart does, but TRU's return policy is not much better. TRU has a better price matching policy because they'll take coupons and match percentage discounts where Walmart doesn't.

However, TRU's return policy is only 45 days whereas you get 90 days with Walmart.

I know it used to be 15 days but it may have moved to 45 days for price adjustments. So if I buy a figure for 39.99 and two weeks later it's 29.99, they will credit the difference (either gift card, your creditcard, cash or debit) When I do this I put it on a gift card...gonna use it sometime anyway.
Not sure about Walmarts policy on that. I've used the TRU one plenty of times.

[DinobotsDestroyU]

Originally Posted by Collectingtoys

Yes, pulled from Bloomberg and updated this morning. Fairfax Financial, same firm that rescued BlackBerry a few years ago, that investment so far has paid off I believe based on current share prices even though BlackBerry today looks nothing like it did during it’s glory days.

Hoping Prem Watsa, the deal maker behind Fairfax leaves Toys R Us Canada running as is especially with the many 25% to 30% off Transformers sales that come every couple of months. Just as important, don’t want to see anyone lose their jobs.

Definitely! My thoughts exactly

[Xtreme987]

Great news.

As much as TRU brick & mortar stores frustrate me sometimes with lack of distribution, it's still nice to go to a physical store to check what they do have. I do enjoy the hunt quite a bit.

It's also nice to go to a store & examine an item before you purchase it. For example - paint flaws on figures. Online you can't really do that.

[MapleMegatron]

Guys, Fairfax is doing the Stalking Hors Bid, thats very different than buying Toysrus.

All this means is that they are the official first bidders to prevent Toysrus from being sold pennies on the dollar. Of course, if no one else bids, they will get it, but this is more to start off the auction.

[Shockwave 75]

Originally Posted by MilanX3

Yes, it will be interesting to see how they develop TRU, or even keep the name TRU...Since they run making decent profits not much may change except for some serious investment in their online store that does need a lot of improvement.

Yeah, they need to start operating like the other online stores. Like doing pre-orders, and maybe even adopting the "pile of loot" option.

Originally Posted by Bruticus82

TRU was an inherently profitable company that was felled by unsustainable debtload (in the US at least).

Someone who really knows about this explained it pretty well a few episodes back on the RFC podcast.
Basically the company that bought TRU did so for 6 billion dollars, but they didn't have the 6B to buy it, so they took out some loans of about 5B to make the purchase, then took the money from TRU to pay off the 5B debt. So where TRU was worth 6B and making a profit, they were suddenly worth onlt 1B, and 5B in the hole! A debt they could never pay off.

[sdmacleod]

Actually, I believe the TRU Price adjustment policy is officially 15 days. But because the Return Policy is 45 days, they know we'll just return and re-buy, so they do the Price Adjustment and save the hassle. At least that's how the nice Service Desk staff explained it to me

[Collectingtoys]

No one else put it in an offer so it looks like Fairfax owns it.

http://business.financialpost.com/ne...he-only-bidder