If you haven’t heard the news already, Circuit City has decided to go into liquidation after failing to find a buyer and secure financing from creditors and lenders.  Circuit City will be closing its remaining 567 U.S. stores.

If you’re a Circuit City customer, holder of Circuit City gift cards, credit cards, or have store credit — here’s a quick FAQ that will hopefully address some of your questions:

If you have a gift card or store credit:

Use the gift cards, gift certificates, coupons, and store credits as soon as possible. Circuit City should honor them during the going out-of-business sale, which is expected to last through March.

If you have a Circuit City credit card:

The Circuit City credit card is issued and administered by Chase, so don’t expect it to magically disappear. Most likely your Circuit City credit card will be rebranded to a generic Chase card in a future date.  Continue to make payments if you have a balance!

If you want to return an item:

You have only about 14 days left, until January 30th, to return items purchased prior to the going-out-of-business sale.  All sales are final on anything bought after January 16.

If you have a pending mail-in-rebate:

This depends on if the rebate was from the product manufacture or Circuit City.  If the rebate is from a manufacture, you’ll be okay.  Although Circuit City uses a third party to handle its rebate offerings, the rebate processor won’t be able to pay you if Circuit City haven’t paid them.  If you’ve kept your rebate submission form, there should be a phone number or a page online for you to check the status of your rebate.

If you have an extended warranty:

The warranty is serviced by a third party and should still be in full effect to the terms and condition of the warranty purchase.

If you need to contact Circuit City:

Please do it immediately as Circuit City’s website and call centers will cease to operate after January 18, 2009 (Circuit City’s website is current down and it is unknown if it will reopen before January 18).

If you’re interested in going to the liquidation sale:

The going-out-of-business sale will start tomorrow on January 17, and is expected to last until the end of March.  Please be aware that liquidation sales are not exactly a great place to go look for bargain.  Liquidators often mark up prices significantly before marking it “down” to give appearances of steep discount.