Dear Eric,

I'm happy to report the Servers are back UP!  The only way I could explain what happened today would be to go into "Techno Geek Speak" that 99% of you wouldn't understand so I'm not going to try.  What I can tell you is that we had tech teams around the globe working on it.  Technology is a wonderful thing until it doesn't work.  Today was one of those days when technology was not wonderful!

You will find a lingering problem in your Mall - the very lingering problem we were attempting to fix when everything came crashing down around us.  The problem is in the Store Directory on your Mall.  No matter what you choose in the directory, you are going to be returned to Feature Stores.  Though we were able to get things back up and running, we have not yet been able to isolate the reason for that problem.  There are several work arounds I want you to know about as you look for stores in your Mall.

1)  Use Information Search -  If you are looking for stores that have Shoes, just put Shoes in the Information Search box.  It will open up all the stores that have shoes.

2) Pick A Store box - If you are looking for Lands End, just put in the first few letters:  Lan  before you hit Submit.  It will pull up everything that has that.  The reason I'm telling you to use just the first few letters is because if you use the entire name and don't put it in just right it will tell you the store isn't there.  The first few letters will assure you find it.

3) Jump To Store - this gives you a list of every store on the Mall.  Just scroll down or up until you find what you're looking for.

In the meantime, we will continue to work until we have resolved every issue.  I am determined to make lemonade out of a very sour day.  The only way to do that is to use the lessons learned today to make sure this never happens again.  I believe that will be the end result; I'm just sorry you were caught in the cross-fires of technology issues.

Thank you for your patience and I hope you have a great weekend!