Nationally, same-store sales for the first 17 shopping days of the holiday retail season rose 4.2 percent above those posted in the same period a year ago, according to TeleCheck Services Inc. of Houston, which measures only checks used to pay for goods. In Seattle, sales from the Friday after Thanksgiving through last weekend were up only 2.2 percent and state numbers were up 2.9 percent from those posted during the comparable period a year ago, said TeleCheck economist William Ford. The state numbers are well below the 3.4 percent increase in Arizona, 3.3 percent increase in California, 3.8 percent increase in Oregon, 4.1 percent increase in Colorado and 5.8 percent increase in Hawaii. TeleCheck's numbers result from same-store comparisons of the dollar volume of authorized checks written by consumers at more than 27,000 of TeleCheck's 210,000 subscribing businesses.
Checks account for about a third of retail transactions, the company says.
Cash and credit card sales data were not available. Nationally, economist Michael Niemira of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd., said retail sales at stores open at least a year last week rose 5.7 percent, putting holiday sales on track to meet or exceed forecasts, Bloomberg News reported.