Ever buy something at Wal-Mart through the store's layaway program?

Whether you do this frequently or never have, you won't have the chance after Nov. 19. That's the last day the national retailer will accept items for layaway payment, forcing Wal-Mart shoppers either to pay in full upfront or to use other means such as a credit card when buying their famously low-cost merchandise.

For Mount Desert resident Tracy Colson, that's not much of an option. As a single mother with four young daughters, she is a faithful Wal-Mart customer and frequently buys on layaway to help make ends meet. Doing away with the program, she believes, discriminates against low-income customers like her.

"I am sure that's not their intent," Colson said Monday about the company. "I feel it's taking away low-income families' abilities to provide better lifestyles [for their children]."

She said she works several jobs and, when she has $100 to spend, has to split it up evenly among her four children's needs. Wal-Mart has the cheapest prices, she said, and she can't afford to go anywhere else.

"Every day is a challenge, being a single mother with four kids," she said. "I can't go to a store with prices that are twice as much just because they have layaway."

With layaway purchases, buyers typically pay 10 percent upfront for an item, which the store then holds in reserve while the customer makes additional payments over the next 60 days. Once the item has been fully paid for, they are allowed to take it home and face no more charges or interest.

Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg said Monday that the retail giant is doing away with the program nationwide. All Wal-Mart items placed on layaway must be paid for in full and picked up by Dec. 8, he said.

"The demand for [layaway] and the usage of it has declined in recent years," Lundberg said. "As layaway usage has declined, the cost of providing the service has risen."

The less customers use the layaway program, he said, the less Wal-Mart gets in return for placing items aside and for maintaining the program. If items are not paid for in full and eventually placed back on store shelves, he said, Wal-Mart ends up spending more on that failed transaction than it gets in return.

According to Charles Colgan, a professor at the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School of Public Service and a former state economist for Maine, layaway and in-store credit programs are fading away as credit card companies become more prominent in the retail credit sector.

"The retailers have gotten out of the credit business," he said.

Credit card firms usually charge higher interest rates than those offered by specific retailers, Colgan said, but credit-card companies are becoming more widespread because the credit firms increasingly are targeting moderate- and low-income consumers as customers.

Colgan said he hears stories of people who have declared bankruptcy who still get credit card offers in the mail.

"There's hardly an American household anywhere that doesn't get deluged with credit card offers," Colgan said.

Lundberg said retailers started implementing layaway programs before credit cards and other payment programs became commonplace. Wal-Mart now has zero-percent financing programs, he said, and is offering $20 cash back to each customer who gets a Wal-Mart credit card and uses it to buy $100 or more worth of merchandise on the date it is issued.

"We're always looking at better ways to serve our customers," Lundberg said.

Colson, however, isn't optimistic about her prospects of getting a credit card, from Wal-Mart or anybody else. She said that because she owns her house and her truck, she has no credit history.

"Zero credit, I think, is worse than bad credit," Colson said. "I tried for a Sam's Club card and got turned down. It's the same company."

James Hughes, a Bates College economics professor who has written about Wal-Mart, said Monday that for retailers, layaway programs typically are the most expensive kind of purchase plans they offer. It ties up merchandise, sometimes without freeing space for other items, before the retailer makes money, he said.

Hughes estimated that at some large stores as much as $100,000 worth of merchandise may be set aside in layaway at any one time.

Some consumers may have trouble getting lines of credit, Hughes acknowledged, but those who can often use them, regardless of whether it's best for their long-term financial stability.

"Humans tend to like instant gratification," the Bates professor said. "If we can get it now, we're going to worry about the 23 percent [interest] later on."

With the prevalence of credit cards, it is rare that someone gets turned down for an account, Hughes said. People who cannot afford the interest but want to improve their credit rating could use cards that have zero-percent interest for the first six months and then switch to another, building up their rating while getting their finances in order to the point that they can avoid interest by paying off their card balances every 30 days, he said.

As for Wal-Mart's decision to eliminate its layaway program, Colson is not the first to raise concerns about it. Media outlets in Louisiana, New York, Oregon and other states have reported stories about it, and the Web site www.petitiononline.com claims to have collected more than 33,000 signatures from people who want the retailer to keep its layaway program.

Colson has contacted Wal-Mart officials and said she would like to participate in a petition drive to get the retailer to change its mind. She said she did not know about the Internet-based petition drive for the same reason she has not looked into buying from cheap retailers online.

"I can't afford to buy a computer," she said.