Ask a former Dick Smith employee anything :)

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Ultimate Geek
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#1592848 14-Jul-2016 23:32

MadEngineer: Thanks for that awesome reply :)

Once I visited a dse store with my brother looking at TVs as he was shifting. An employee showed us "cost" prices of some of the tellys from a nearby terminal. There wasn't much in it but of course I was taking this with a grain of salt.

So I guess everyone had acces to the supposed cost prices?

That's right, everyone could check the supposed cost price in the POS. However, like those misleading Cost + 10% sales stores seem to run, I'm positive that cost figure in the POS didn't include bulk discount and I know for a fact it didn't include supplier rebates.

That's the same in other retailers too though, staff are only shown the supposed 'cost' price. It's another possible way for head offices to control how much a sales person discounts items by.

But I wouldn't recommend trying to negotiate a cheaper with a sales person based on knowing they get bulk discount and rebates.

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LostBoyNZ

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#1592851 14-Jul-2016 23:42

gzt: On notebook/laptop who were the best brands to deal with for customer resolution and satisfaction from your point of view?

Honestly, they're all fairly similar in the end, despite most people saying they'd never touch a certain brand again... it was always a different brand they'd mention.

However, as far as I know...

HP and Toshiba have more service agents, so turn around time may be quicker there.

Acer for example have one main service agent in Auckland, so it's likely to sit in a queue for longer.

Asus I believe also have just one main service agent.

But please don't take these as certain facts, and it may vary between companies depending on which repair agents they deal with.

For consumer guarantees act claims, Asus were probably the most difficult to deal with in my experience. But again, that may vary.

Laptops are one thing where I genuinely would consider extra cover though, in particular from Harvey Norman. Don't quote me on this, but if I understand it right, they inspect the laptop in house, and you can choose a brand new laptop. If you're unhappy that the print on one of your keyboard keys wore off a little even, you can swap your laptop. Personally I wouldn't waste my warranty on that, but you get the idea, if it's a minor hardware fault even, they swap it. That's well above the consumer guarantees there, and faster too.

However don't pay anything near the price they want for warranties, they're insanely expensive. Like everyone, they'll have targets they want to meet, and freedom to discount. Pick a slow day maybe, or one towards the end of the month (if they're not doing so great). It helps if you're buying an accessory or two. You could even flat out ask them how their warranty target is going for the month, haha.

What I didn't like personally was the customers who come in, picked a laptop which has 30% off or something, and ask for all sorts of free stuff, but they don't want to buy anything but the laptop.

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BlakJak

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#1593246 15-Jul-2016 17:18

LostBoyNZ:
xpd:

What sort of staff discount did you get (if any) ? :) And did you buy any big ticket ($500+) items yourself from the store or found it a lot cheaper elsewhere ?

In the early days, cost + GST + 10% if I remember right. Which was great if you needed batteries, cables, anything home brand. But just ok if you wanted a big ticket item like a TV, laptop or such. Sometimes it was better to wait for a sale. And if you wanted something like a PlayStation, it actually cost more on staff discount because there's that little margin in them.

Then later our staff discount changed to 7.5% off the retail price, which worked at Countdown too. This was even valid if something was on special, just not Apple. It was terrible if you wanted to buy batteries or such though.

Did I personally buy any big ticket items then find them much cheaper elsewhere? Not personally no, but then I'm a PriceSpy type of person, I always check first.

Not wanting to steal thunder, but I was DSE Staff from 1996 to 2000.

In those days it was Cost + 10% + GST (order important!).

I understand it changed in the 2001-2002 period.

Also back in my day the commission offered was 0.5%. So if you sold a desktop computer setup for $3000, you'd get $15. But when the hourly rate was ~$8.50 as it was back then, you were effectively getting an extra couple of hours pay. The sales staff who could routinely churn out $1000's per day in sales could move their bottom line upward by a reasonable amount.

I think Managers would be bonus'd on an annual basis based on their store's performance - but unsure on that. In my time staff didn't get any sort of profit-share.

I feel that DSE's heyday ended around the '99-00 period, that was when they actively started culling a lot of the more 'electronics' stuff.

By the Mid-Late 2000's I was actively avoiding shopping in DSE's except in specific cases, and I started boycotting them completely in around 2010.

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freitasm

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#1593306 15-Jul-2016 19:09

LostBoyNZ:

Towards the end, someone even managed to get a set of cellphone cabinet keys (the cellphone cabinet keys were all the same for each store it would seem, yikes!) and stole a bunch of Galaxy S5's.

This might explain why cabinets were sold without the keys - so people wouldn't go around trying to get stuff out of cabinets still in store.

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LostBoyNZ

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#1593318 15-Jul-2016 19:19

BlakJak:Not wanting to steal thunder, but I was DSE Staff from 1996 to 2000.

In those days it was Cost + 10% + GST (order important!).

I understand it changed in the 2001-2002 period.

Also back in my day the commission offered was 0.5%. So if you sold a desktop computer setup for $3000, you'd get $15. But when the hourly rate was ~$8.50 as it was back then, you were effectively getting an extra couple of hours pay. The sales staff who could routinely churn out $1000's per day in sales could move their bottom line upward by a reasonable amount.

I think Managers would be bonus'd on an annual basis based on their store's performance - but unsure on that. In my time staff didn't get any sort of profit-share.

I feel that DSE's heyday ended around the '99-00 period, that was when they actively started culling a lot of the more 'electronics' stuff.

By the Mid-Late 2000's I was actively avoiding shopping in DSE's except in specific cases, and I started boycotting them completely in around 2010.

The more ex-staff here the better :D Yeah it was around the mid 2000's I started, and it's quite interesting to hear about pre-those days.

For example in the years of sales per hour targets (the final few years), if you worked 8 hours in a day, you probably had to hit $2,700. Of course it was averaged out over a month, but if you got $1,000 most days, you'd need some mega awesome days to make that up.

My hourly rate at the end was $15.90, or $17 when I was duty manager. Then commission added about another $6 an hour onto that (more or less).

Over the years they tried to get me to change my contract many times, but somehow they'd always forget to bring it up again, and so I held onto my old contract till the end... which had over time. That was great during stock take. It was probably roughly around 2010 when they removed overtime from new contracts.

Managers during these years got... well most of them, no bonus. If you got a bonus, you were at a new store, and it was the first year. The targets were insane.

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LostBoyNZ

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#1593320 15-Jul-2016 19:22

freitasm:

LostBoyNZ:

Towards the end, someone even managed to get a set of cellphone cabinet keys (the cellphone cabinet keys were all the same for each store it would seem, yikes!) and stole a bunch of Galaxy S5's.

This might explain why cabinets were sold without the keys - so people wouldn't go around trying to get stuff out of cabinets still in store.

Yeah. Not all cabinets had the same keys as other stores. There were several variations of what they called 'bone keys'. But it'd be a security risk for people who bought the cabinets too, if there were a lot of keys out there. Somehow though, every store that got the new cellphone cabinets during the last year or so, they all had the same keys. And every store got a pile of keys, likely without any record of how many there should be.

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MadEngineer

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#1593326 15-Jul-2016 19:30

I really really miss entering a dse store when there was a cabinet screamer going off that always seemed to take too long to silence.

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LostBoyNZ

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#1593327 15-Jul-2016 19:33

MadEngineer:

I really really miss entering a dse store when there was a cabinet screamer going off that always seemed to take too long to silence.

*starts rolling back and forth in the fetal position* OMG... Christmas time..... cabinet screamer going off...... lines of people........... baby crying....... which key is it?!? ......

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freitasm

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#1593330 15-Jul-2016 19:42

LostBoyNZ:

I really disagreed with that last one, and even leaked the details of it here on Geekzone Forums. Apparently head office tried to force Mauricio to give up my details, but he respected the privacy :)

As a matter of fact DSE was not the only company to contact Geekzone asking for details on posts. I only ever received one request from DSE but other companies were really "interested" and I repeatedly received such requests from two large organisations, let's say "Red" and "Blue".

At the end I couldn't possibly disclose anything about posters, because of what I believe in and the Privacy Act 1993. I did receive requests for email addresses, IP addresses and any other information I had. Never disclosed these. I know that these companies almost (always) found the person because they monitor their networks closely - one of the reasons why I decided our PM pages should be served over HTTPS.

In one case someone did a copy and paste from their Intranet with new offerings coming out. Dumb move. The person really wanted to "help" by showing the company being active with new services, etc but really wrong way of doing it. It was just a case for this company to see who had access to the Intranet page in question and cross check date and time they posted with the date and time the Intranet was accessed. I know this person lost their job.

I haven't received requests like this in a few years now. I guess these companies got tired of asking and getting a single sentence reply with a link to the Privacy Act...

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LostBoyNZ

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Ultimate Geek
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#1593425 16-Jul-2016 00:32

freitasm:

LostBoyNZ:

I really disagreed with that last one, and even leaked the details of it here on Geekzone Forums. Apparently head office tried to force Mauricio to give up my details, but he respected the privacy :)

As a matter of fact DSE was not the only company to contact Geekzone asking for details on posts. I only ever received one request from DSE but other companies were really "interested" and I repeatedly received such requests from two large organisations, let's say "Red" and "Blue".

At the end I couldn't possibly disclose anything about posters, because of the Privacy Act 1993. I did receive requests for email addresses, IP addresses and any other information I had. Never disclosed these. I know that these companies almost (always) found the person because they monitor their networks closely - one of the reasons why I decided our PM pages should be served over HTTPS.

In one case someone did a copy and paste from their Intranet with new offerings coming out. Dumb move. The person really wanted to "help" by showing the company being active with new services, etc but really wrong way of doing it. It was just a case for this company to see who had access to the Intranet page in question and cross check date and time they posted with the date and time the Intranet was accessed. I know this person lost their job.

I haven't received requests like this in a few years now. I guess these companies got tired of asking and getting a single sentence reply with a link to the Privacy Act...

Interesting! But yeah, very important to do it smartly. If I remember right I created a new username for the post, and logged in from home not work.

And great to hear respect for the privacy act. I'm sure not all websites would do be the same there, sadly.

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mattwnz

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#1593592 16-Jul-2016 17:21

LostBoyNZ:

And great to hear respect for the privacy act. I'm sure not all websites would do be the same there, sadly.

A breach in privacy can be a very serious matter. This is why I am careful never to CC emails to other people just in case. It would be interesting to know under what circumstances business can get that sort of information from another website.

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freitasm

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#1593601 16-Jul-2016 17:38

They can't unless there is a court order or warrant involved.

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jpoc

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#1594212 17-Jul-2016 21:44

Why did DS ever think that it was a good idea to resell second hand goods (returns?) as new?

I have never encountered that from another retailer but I have personal experience of it at DS and have seen it mentioned in the media as a DS issue.

My own experience was five years ago and it was the end of my time as a DS customer and I expect that it would have been the same for others too.

BlakJak

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#1594282 18-Jul-2016 09:42

jpoc:
Why did DS ever think that it was a good idea to resell second hand goods (returns?) as new?

I have never encountered that from another retailer but I have personal experience of it at DS and have seen it mentioned in the media as a DS issue.

My own experience was five years ago and it was the end of my time as a DS customer and I expect that it would have been the same for others too.

Residual value is better than writing off the stock item?

It would depend on why the item was returned.

"it didn't do what I thought it would do" = nothing actually wrong with it, except that it's now opened and used.

We used to have a thing called 'T2', I presume 'Tier 2' and this would be stock that would be discounted as compensation for its less-than-perfect condition, either because items were missing, no packaging, or because it was a returned item. The Manager would determine a level of discount to be applied, proportional to its condition.

This is hardly unusual, I see Mitre 10 do similar things (their 'T2 Table' is often one of the discount benches near the checkouts) and of late i've also seen the same behavior at Noel Leemings.

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surfisup1000

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#1594285 18-Jul-2016 09:51

BlakJak:
jpoc:

Why did DS ever think that it was a good idea to resell second hand goods (returns?) as new?

I have never encountered that from another retailer but I have personal experience of it at DS and have seen it mentioned in the media as a DS issue.

My own experience was five years ago and it was the end of my time as a DS customer and I expect that it would have been the same for others too.

Residual value is better than writing off the stock item? It would depend on why the item was returned. "it didn't do what I thought it would do" = nothing actually wrong with it, except that it's now opened and used. We used to have a thing called 'T2', I presume 'Tier 2' and this would be stock that would be discounted as compensation for its less-than-perfect condition, either because items were missing, no packaging, or because it was a returned item. The Manager would determine a level of discount to be applied, proportional to its condition. This is hardly unusual, I see Mitre 10 do similar things (their 'T2 Table' is often one of the discount benches near the checkouts) and of late i've also seen the same behavior at Noel Leemings.

I think the point is that they are selling returned items as 'new', not T2.

The warehouse did this to me--- sold me a freeview tuner as 'new', but when I opened it up there were fingerprints all over and the firmware was corrupted and needed updating. It had clearly been returned.

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