Wal-Mart Stores' decision to abandon the old-fashioned layaway system is a blow to some customers here - people of limited means who rely on payment plans to buy Christmas Nativity sets, TVs and baby cribs. The move by the world's biggest retailer, intended to save money and push more people into using credit cards, surprised some Western New York shoppers who said layaway helps keep theirbudgets on track.

"I don't think it's fair that they get rid of it," said Katie Mielcarek, an expectant Blasdell mother who stopped to talk on her way in to the Hamburg Wal-Mart. People in her family have been using layaway to buy Winnie-the-Pooh bedding and other baby gifts for her. That is also how they buy things for Christmas and birthdays. "You pay for it. You get it out of the way," she said. "You don't have a bill."

Even though the service is well used by some - layaway will continue at local Kmart and TJ Maxx stores - mainstream consumer habits have shifted. More people use credit to shop. And, more stores have abandoned the practice, which can involve the expense of staffing a desk, storing goods and tracking payments.

"We have been documenting a decline in the use of layaway," said Linda Blakely, a spokeswoman at Wal-Mart's Arkansas headquarters. "People have options available that were just not available. They are embracing those options."

When the company made its announcement last week that layaway practice it began in 1962 would end after this Christmas season - December 8 is the pickup deadline - it promoted a credit card with a temporary zero percent interest rate as an alternative.

Wal-Mart now joins a long list of retailers - including Macy's, Bon-Ton, Kohl's, Circuit City and Target - that do not have layaway. "Retailers have found they can make better use of their employees' time," said Ellen Davis, spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based National Retail Federation. "Today, I think the retailers that offer layaway are the exception, not the rule."

For Love Goel, a Minneapolis retail investor, Wal-Mart's decision was wise business, but poor empathy.

"All families go through tough times," said Goel, whose career included working as chief operating officer for Fingerhut, a cataloger serving consumers with incomes in the $20,000 range. "You don't want to be so arrogant that you dismiss these customers."

Instead, he said, retailers abandoning layaway should explain options, such as credit, online purchasing and lists of stores where layaway is still available. "You need retailers to offer solutions," Goel said.

Layaway was developed during the Depression of the 1930s when people didn't have much money and they didn't use credit cards, said Goel, chairman of Growth Ventures Group. Now that consumers have thousands of credit options, he said, layaway is less than 1 percent of the retail business. "The demand does not justify the incremental costs," Goel said.

Amanda Nicholson remembers how layaway helped her, decades ago, when she was a young woman working at Carson Pirie Scott department store in Chicago. "I used to use it when I was a young executive and I couldn't afford my wardrobe," said Nicholson, an assistant professor of retail management at Syracuse University. "It was much more popular then."

Now, middle income people are turning to credit more than before, but Wal-Mart is still making a mistake, said Arun Jain, chairman of the marketing department at the University at Buffalo.

Layaway is tool for drawing in Wal-Mart's core customer base, he said: Consumers with limited incomes. Layaway buyers also carry an often unnoticed advantage for retailers: They shop more because they must make more visits in to make payments. And they buy before the goods go on sale.

"They're going to be delivering them on a silver platter to Kmart," Jain said of Wal-Mart. "They're kicking away the business."

Shoppers last week seemed to agree that layaway still matters. One woman, who declined to give her name, was so stricken by the news that she carefully used a finger to read every line in the one page announcement posted at the Wal-Mart layaway desk.

The woman had come to the counter with a shopping cart of Spiderman sheets for her son, purple curtains and a wallpaper border. Layaway worked for her, she said, because she could make payments whenever she had money left after she covered her budget.

A debit card, not credit, would be her alternative for pricey purchases. She liked layaway better because it let her pick out lots of things while they were in stock. "You could get everything paying a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time," she said. "You don't have to worry about it being gone."

In the parking lot, Carol Prendergast, 84, reminisced about her days as a young woman working at King's department store, exasperating layaway clerks by bringing cartloads of clothes and toys for her six children.

"When my kids were little, I did nothing but use layaways," she said. "With a limited income and a big family, you have to use layaway. I don't care what anybody says."

A Kmart spokeswoman explained the stores will continue layaway, which includes a $5 fee and payments every two weeks for an eight week period, because people use it.

"We consider it a value-added service to our customers," said Kim Freeley, speaking of the 40-year-old program from Kmart's headquarters outside Chicago.

At Kmart in West Seneca, manager Judi Hejna calculated there were some 1,200 customers who used layaway routinely. The other local Kmarts had even more.

Henja opened the back room door to reveal a floor stacked with boxes labeled with the total and arranged in aisles so there was walk-through space. A crib and six other boxes for $500, a 20-inch TV, $123, a trampoline, $256, a kid-sized table and chair set with five other boxes, $93.

There was more up a small flight of stairs. Clear plastic bags suspended from the ceiling held cotton underwear, camouflage shirts and toys. Bundled comforters perched on shelves. A row of new bicycles lined up against a wall.

"We're always looking for more space," Henja said. While she doesn't use layaway as she used to when her family was young, she now sees people of all ages use it. Two older gentlemen came in to pay off a summer patio set. Young mothers come in July and August to start buying backpacks and clothes for school. One person has already started to put money on a gas grill as a Christmas present.

To Henja, it seems more shoppers use layaway now than they did when she started with Kmart 26 years ago. To say, as retail executives do, that demand has dropped, seems wrong.

"That's not true," she said. "That's not true at all."