Dick Smith’s $7m sale ‘scam’

Claire Connelly, Technology Reporter
news.com.au
April 03, 2012

DICK Smith’s $7 million games sale has been labelled a PR disaster after shoppers left confused and empty handed.

Dick Smith acting general manager David White issued the apology this afternoon to disappointed gaming sale customers.

“Due to the unforseen popularity of today’s Dick Smith gaming sale some customers did not get the products they wanted,” he said.
A number of stores sold out of some products and the Dick Smith website received an unprecedented volume in traffic.”

“We understand a certain amount of misinformation was published online last week that led some customers to believe certain products were on sale when they were not or they were a different discount.”

News of the sale was leaked on Friday, with sites claiming it was a games clearance sale due to a staffer saying Dick Smith would no longer be stocking any video games.

Several documents posted online appeared to show video game stock set to be pushed out at massively reduced prices.

Dick Smith confirmed on Facebook later on Friday that the sale would take place from 8am this morning.

Among the items on the leaked lists were Nintendo’s Wii Console, slashed to $129 down from a recommended retail price of $299.

Xbox consoles were on sale for $100, down from Xbox’s RRP of $399, and the PlayStation Portable (PSP) was down to $40 from its RRP of $189.95.

But when customers turned up at stores this morning, many found staff claiming to be unaware that the sale had even been scheduled.

Twenty-six-year-old desktop support worker, Charles Grogan told news.com.au that he visited three different Dick Smith stores in Queensland but found that many of the games listed were not on sale.

“Toombul was first on my list, there was at least 100+ people in line by the time doors opened,” Mr Grogan said.

“Customers ran to the back of the store where the game section normally is, skipping past all the items on sale in ‘throw out bins’ along the way.”

“When I got to the counter, the sales staff were yelling out to customers to stop picking up the display boxes for Xboxes and PlayStations as the store had no stock of those items that were on sale.”

Mr Grogan said that most of the sale stock wasn’t on display at Dick Smith’s Cannon Hill store, but was kept behind the counter.
“The staff member at Cannon Hill told me that the leaked list of sale items actually changed a few times over the weekend,” he said.

The staff member also told Mr Grogan that the sale was meant to start on April 5 but had to be pushed forward due to the leak.

“They didn’t have the staff over the weekend to reprice the stock on the shelf, instead they came in early and took it all off the shelf,” he said.

News.com.au senior developer Sebastian Servat was one of the people queuing up this morning, a decision he said was a complete waste of time.

“There were hundreds of people just barging in the store, grabbing games, consoles, accessories, just to make it to the register and be told that nothing is on sale,” Mr Servat said.

Some reports even claim that because of the leak, Dick Smith declined to offer many goods on sale.

One commenter on Gizmodo said the staff at Dick Smith posted a sign outside one of their stores that read:
“Dear Customers,

As you may know, we are having a huge gaming sale starting from 2/4/12.

However due to the internet leak, our business will not drop 80% of what was listed until April 10th.
Thankyou (sic)”

However, a spokesperson for Dick Smith confirmed that the sale did indeed take place today as planned.

“All Dick Smith stores received communication about the gaming sale last Wednesday.”

Angry customers vented their frustration online, accusing staff of snapping up items before they officially went on sale.

“Speaking to a mate who works at Dick Smith said most of the staff got consoles before the stores were open this morning,” one commentor on Gizmodo claimed.

Another – “Vin” – said the staff at Cannon Hill told him Xbox consoles were not available for sale because they weren’t in “saleable conditions”.

“But I was informed (by another Dick Smith store) that they had two Xboxes in store,” he wrote

This claim was also backed up by commenter “Matt” who said he heard a similar response when he spoke to one of the staff at Cannon Hill.

“If they were going to let staff have first dibs, they shouldn’t have confirmed the leak, or at least informed that this was going to be standard practice,” he wrote.

Associate editor of Kotaku, Luke Plunkett wrote on Twitter: “wow, Dick Smith’s sale was a total f***ing waste of everyone’s time. And they wonder why nobody buys video games there!”

“DSE Altona had almost nothing (on sale), plenty of stock of items that were clearly on the discount list at full price,” wrote a commenter known as “Mixer” on OzBargain.

“As far as I am concerned, this is absolutely bait advertising.”

Dick Smith said pricing should have been “consistently applied across identical products in all stores”, but the advertised stock was “limited and varied in amount and products between stores”.

“This was clearly outlined on the Dick Smith Facebook page when the sale was announced last week,” it said.