Right now, there are two seemingly incompatible things going on in Kmart stores: the retailer is pushing layaway contracts for the holiday season, and also closing many stores. While the company insists that this should not lead to customer confusion, it took a while for some stores to get on-message.

This controversy started at the store in Springfield, Ohio, which is slated to close. Some customers complained to a local news station that they had been told that their layaway contracts needed to be paid off by November 1st, and couldn’t be transferred to Kmart.com or to another store that was remaining open.

A Sears spokeswoman told the WDTN that this wasn’t correct, but an undercover visit to the store showed that nobody had bothered to tell its employees that layaway contracts could be transferred. Two weeks later, Sears sent the station another statement to clear things up, but it would be interesting to hear what stores are actually telling people.

The retailer explained that it typically announces a store closing 11 weeks in advance, and the longest layaway contracts (a small minority of them) last for 12 weeks. This would mean that the customer who the station interviewed either misunderstood her layaway contract or misunderstood what store employees told her. Kmart explained:

In the case of a small handful of customers that do have a contract that goes past the store close date – it would only affect their contract by about one week. Meaning, they would potentially have to double up of one payment. The customer can choose which payment they want to double up on and they are alerted to this fact in advance.

When a store closes, customers are supposed to be able to pay off their layaway balance until the last day that the store is open. In theory. Keep that in mind if you’re using layaway in the coming months as Kmart closes a lot of stores.

Springfield K-Mart working with layaway customers [WDTN]

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.