Ask a former Dick Smith employee anything :)

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 1594295 18-Jul-2016 10:03

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.

Selling them as new? It happens in other retailers too unfortunately, but it would never be company directive to do that. Most often it's usually someone put the returned product down in the wrong spot behind the counter, and someone else put it back out on the shelf, or some staff member thought it was so well re-packaged they'd just put it back on the shelf (lazy).

At Dick Smith every store had Not New stickers, which were meant to be put on the box of every returned item. There were also Quarantine labels which would come out of the receipt printer for any returned product with storage. This was to be put on the item, and kept on there until the storage was wiped, and it came about when an Australian store sold a returned cellphone with porn on it.

I know of another case, from a Harvey Norman in the same shopping center we were in, where they sold an external hard drive with a previous customers data still on it. It cost them thousands as they were essentially blackmailed by the customer who bought the returned hard drive, I assume to keep it out of the press.

LostBoyNZ

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Reply # 1594297 18-Jul-2016 10:08

BlakJak: 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.

Ah yes the T2 Table, that brings back memories, hehe.

Jaxson

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Reply # 1594300 18-Jul-2016 10:15

Did the staff twig to what was happening during the build up to being floated on the stock exchange?

The last buyers bought a hollow stripped clean shell of a company, and it was never going to survive. Really feel for you guys, seeing your place of work gutted, and also for the reps and merchandisers who received income from the store calls also.

hyperman

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Reply # 1594316 18-Jul-2016 10:35

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Jaxson:

Did the staff twig to what was happening during the build up to being floated on the stock exchange?

The last buyers bought a hollow stripped clean shell of a company, and it was never going to survive. Really feel for you guys, seeing your place of work gutted, and also for the reps and merchandisers who received income from the store calls also.

To be honest as another Ex employee;
I saw the writing on the wall about 9 years ago

The views expressed by me are not necessarily those of my employer

LostBoyNZ

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Reply # 1594330 18-Jul-2016 10:50

When they bought it from Woolworths, I think it certainly could have survived. It was having issues, but in part because of the woolworths way of thinking. They ran us like a supermarket, where volume selling was the name of the game.

I remember when the big boss came to visit, he saw a laptop on our end display and said if he was a normal customer, walked in, and said Warehouse Stationary or someone had this for $100 cheaper, would you match it? I went and checked our cost price and then asked if he was going to buy anything else, and he said no just the laptop.

The laptop price was already below 'cost', which would have meant it was making money on rebates instead, but an extra $100 off seemed insane. I said no I'd apologize and say we couldn't match it. He said wrong, I should do it, because they'd rather take the sale from the competition.

Now I could already see a few things wrong with this. One being that they didn't ever buy enough stock, so selling it at a massive loss would also mean when the person comes in who wants to buy it plus Office, a bag and such, I have to turn him away because we're sold out.

I remember my manager and the area manager both looking at me like yeah, this is crazy but just go with it in front of the big boss.

The new owners bought a fix-a-upper company, but they were the ones that destroyed it. They put it into a huge downward spiral, cutting back on stock and staff until sales improved, but sales couldn't improve because there was no stock to sell, and no one to serve people when it did get busy. So then sales slowed even more. So they cut back even more staff and stock. And they did everything they could to make the business look great on paper. Behind all that though, was some dodgy goings on. Stock takes cancelled, don't write off stock. Refusing to listen that the reduced staff meant stores were losing more than ever. The loss prevention boss wisely quit; he wouldn't want to be linked to Dick Smith if this blew up.

They even banked some of the float money from the tills to improve the profit.

We were losing sales all the time due to not having things in stock, yet we had tons of products nobody wanted, possibly because the boss had a deal going with his cousin in Hong Kong, who ran the supplier for loads of the crap we had tons of, that nobody wanted.

All sorts of dodgy things and potentially dodgy things.

But at the start, they were all about becoming #1 in mobility, and this is what we're going to become... so we were all interested, if a bit skeptical. But no I'd be surprised if any staff figured out what was going to happen that early on. Over the years though, we saw all the little pieces of it yes.

Thanks, and agreed on the reps too. They were always nice, and sometimes quite interesting to talk to, for example finding out Dick Smith hadn't paid the bills for such and such stock in a while.

Deamo

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Reply # 1594443 18-Jul-2016 12:33

LostBoyNZ:

At Dick Smith every store had Not New stickers, which were meant to be put on the box of every returned item. There were also Quarantine labels which would come out of the receipt printer for any returned product with storage. This was to be put on the item, and kept on there until the storage was wiped, and it came about when an Australian store sold a returned cellphone with porn on it.

Interesting, when did this come into force?

I bought a Cowon X5L from the big DSE in Hamilton CBD, and when i plugged it into my PC i found it had a bunch of someone else's music & porn on it. probably should have gone back to the store about it, but i couldn't be arsed.

hyperman

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Reply # 1594467 18-Jul-2016 13:21

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Deamo:

LostBoyNZ:

At Dick Smith every store had Not New stickers, which were meant to be put on the box of every returned item. There were also Quarantine labels which would come out of the receipt printer for any returned product with storage. This was to be put on the item, and kept on there until the storage was wiped, and it came about when an Australian store sold a returned cellphone with porn on it.

Interesting, when did this come into force?

I bought a Cowon X5L from the big DSE in Hamilton CBD, and when i plugged it into my PC i found it had a bunch of someone else's music & porn on it. probably should have gone back to the store about it, but i couldn't be arsed.

the "not new" stickers had been in place over 10 years when I was working for them ....

The views expressed by me are not necessarily those of my employer

mdooher

Hmm, what to write...
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Reply # 1595232 19-Jul-2016 19:24

I remember buying a 230 to 12v transformer from the Dunedin store and taking it back for replacement because it was faulty. A week or so later we decided we need another one. When I got it back to work and unboxed it I found the leads cut off where I had removed it from my project the previous week...

human error I assume

Matthew

LostBoyNZ

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Reply # 1595280 19-Jul-2016 20:01

mdooher:

I remember buying a 230 to 12v transformer from the Dunedin store and taking it back for replacement because it was faulty. A week or so later we decided we need another one. When I got it back to work and unboxed it I found the leads cut off where I had removed it from my project the previous week...

human error I assume

Oops!! Yeah especially because the item was faulty, that should have been returned as needs repair, which for that particular item would have automatically been changed to a write off instead. It should have gone to a write off box out the back.

Dunnersfella

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Reply # 1595426 20-Jul-2016 08:22

To be fair, selling under cost and relying on the rebate is what EVERY store will do if it means taking a deal off the opposition.

If Dick Smith thought that taking every deal would make the opposition 'starve'... well, they may have been underestimating just how much the other retailers were doing.

To the OP, did you ever look at moving to another retailer?

cisconz

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Reply # 1595433 20-Jul-2016 08:36

I remember that there was a mass exodus from the store I used to work in when JB Hifi came into the market.

Hmmmm

MikeAqua

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Reply # 1595487 20-Jul-2016 10:13

LostBoyNZ:

cutting back on stock and staff until sales improved, but sales couldn't improve because there was no stock to sell, and no one to serve people when it did get busy. So then sales slowed even more. So they cut back even more staff and stock.

"Floggings will continue until morale improves!"

Mike

LostBoyNZ

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 1595517 20-Jul-2016 11:06

Dunnersfella:

To be fair, selling under cost and relying on the rebate is what EVERY store will do if it means taking a deal off the opposition.

If Dick Smith thought that taking every deal would make the opposition 'starve'... well, they may have been underestimating just how much the other retailers were doing.

To the OP, did you ever look at moving to another retailer?

Indeed. Some customers would circle around all the stores, constantly getting them to beat each others price. That's also part of why you won't always find the exact same model laptop in different stores now too, to combat price matching. It only applies for some laptops, but I wouldn't be surprised if that becomes even more common in the future.

I did think about moving to the Warehouse actually when they brought in the retail career wage, but I was managing to hit commission every month and with duty manager rates, that brought my pay slips above what I would have gotten at The Warehouse. Plus my manager was the best I'd ever had (and I've had many) and very flexible in terms of my restored hours. Knowing that I wanted to study, I decided to stay there instead. I started studying part time mid last year, and my manager basically worked up a roster around my class timetable. So nice :D

LostBoyNZ

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Reply # 1595520 20-Jul-2016 11:07

cisconz:

I remember that there was a mass exodus from the store I used to work in when JB Hifi came into the market.

Great to see JB HiFi expanding too :)

LostBoyNZ

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 1595522 20-Jul-2016 11:08

MikeAqua:

LostBoyNZ:

cutting back on stock and staff until sales improved, but sales couldn't improve because there was no stock to sell, and no one to serve people when it did get busy. So then sales slowed even more. So they cut back even more staff and stock.

"Floggings will continue until morale improves!"

hahaha, basically yeah! LOL. They did acknowledge morale was extremely low at one point, but rather than making changes, they tried teaching managers how to be more positive and "get out of the pit" (their words). Managers went back to their stores and on a giant sheet of paper, had to draw a pit and write words around it on how to stay out of the pit.

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