Drugstores will offer deals, stay open later for last-minute Santas

For serious holiday shopping procrastinators, drugstores and convenience stores are offering last-minute deals. Even better for the desperate, many of them will still be open at, say, 3 a.m. Christmas Day.
The last-minute rush tends to make these stores busier than they are the rest of the season.

"Like every Christmas season, our performance is driven by the final days, which makes this a big week," Walgreen Co. CEO Greg Wasson told investors Monday. "It could be more important this year as more consumers delayed the holiday shopping to the last minute."

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Most Walgreens locations will be open until midnight today. Nearly 1,600 24-hour locations will be open all night. On Christmas Day, non-24-hour locations will be open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The drugstore has tech gifts like a Kodak Digital Camera for $69.99 and Disney products and games. And batteries. Don't forget the batteries.

Stores in the 7-Eleven chain are open 24 hours, and they have items like prepaid cell phones, including a Verizon Smooth u350 phone for $19.99 that features a camera, Bluetooth and Verizon service; DVDs; wine; and gift cards.

The 7-Eleven chain said gift-card sales already are up in the high double digits, the most popular being the 7-Eleven card, a prepaid Visa card and iTunes gift cards.

For fans of online role-playing games, 7-Eleven also has increased its selection of multiplayer online game gift cards, which let players buy playtime or items in online games, including World of Warcraft and Mafia Wars.

At CVS, more than 5,400 stores will be open Christmas Day.

CVS is offering electronics on sale, including a Prism 7-inch high-definition LCD TV for $79.99 and a Craig mp3 player for $29.99. The drugstore chain is also offering perfume from Mariah Carey, Halle Berry and others for $19.99 and spa sets starting at $14.99.

Cutting it close

For those who don't want to brave the stores, there's still time to order gift cards online and send them electronically, though even those have a cutoff.

Victoria's Secret says you can order a gift certificate online by 3 p.m. on Christmas Day, and it will be delivered via e-mail that day.

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