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Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesPENNYSAVER PRINTING CLOSES ABRUPTLY

PENNYSAVER PRINTING CLOSES ABRUPTLY

Customers, workers and landlords were all caught by surprise Friday when Pennysaver Printing closed its operations in Buccaneer Mall and Tillett Gardens.
The business was started in 1975 and has gone through at least two ownerships.
Also left without warning was the U.S. Postal Service, which has an agreement with Pennysaver to cover the private mailbox-delivery service it provided to about 50 residents in its Buccaneer outlet.
Pennysaver is currently owned by Vickers Associates Ltd., with Ronald Vickers listed as president in papers in the Corporate Division of the Lieutenant Governor's Office.
A woman who identified herself as Rema Vickers answered a call to the Buccaneer location Friday and said, "We don't care to comment." She added that she would check with her husband and if they decided to talk later, she'd call back. By Friday evening, she hadn't.
Friday also was the day the Corporate Division involuntarily dissolved Pennysaver because of non-payment of franchise taxes.
According to records in that office, delinquencies went back as far as 1986, although there were more recent payments. The total amount owed was not immediately available.
Word of the closing began to circulate earlier in the week. Reportedly, workers were notified at the beginning of the week, and mail service customers began looking for alternative service at least by Thursday.
Rhoda Tillett, who rents space to Pennysaver at Tillett Gardens, said she heard through the "grapevine" Thursday. "It was a total surprise and a shock. I had to call them. Ron had a lease here until 2001."
Reed Miller, the landlord at Buccaneer Mall, did not return a telephone call Friday.
Tillett estimated the number of employees in the Pennysaver operation at Tillett Gardens at eight or 10. "One of the girls worked there 18 years," she said.
The Post Office was doing what it could to accommodate residents who needed to change their mailing addresses because of the closing.
Roy Benjamin, who heads customer service, said Friday "we didn't receive any kind of official notice" about Pennysaver closing. "We're conducting a little investigation" to determine the obligation of the owners to their mail service customers.
According to the files in the Corporate Division, a corporation called Jaritz Industries Ltd. took over the business in 1993 and filed for bankruptcy in July 1998. Vickers took it over in August 1996.
Lorna Webster, chief of the Corporate Division, declined to discuss whether the government had attempted to negotiate with the company before it was dissolved.

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