Take your anger elsewhere, union tells disgruntled Dick Smith customers

THEY’VE been accused of lying and likened to thieves. As Dick Smith’s collapse gets worse and worse, the company’s workers are growing worried.

THE union representing workers of the beleaguered Dick Smith franchise is asking irate customers to take their anger elsewhere.

In South Australia, where the electronics chain employs about 200 people across 20 stores, the union representing Dick Smith staff say they fear that customers unable to redeem gift vouchers or receive a refund on deposits — as announced by receiver Ferrier Hodgson — will channel their anger at them.

Shop, Distributive and Allied (SDA) Employees Association SA/NT secretary Sonia Romeo said while she sympathised with affected customers, employees had no control over the decisions of the receiver.

“We encourage customers to remember that this is an incredibly difficult time for Dick Smith workers who will be dealing with enormous pressure from customers, and at the same time facing uncertainty about their job,” she said.

Staff in other parts of the country have been accused of openly lying to customers who purchased now worthless gift cards in the run up to Christmas.

James Briggs, a PhD student from Sunshine, in Melbourne’s west, told news.com.au he had been given a generous gift voucher by his dying grandfather and was assured he would be able to redeem it because media reports of the company’s collapse were just “vicious rumours”.

“I went into a Dick Smith store in December and asked about the rumours, I wanted to know if they were still stable enough to purchase from,” he said.

“The store staff assured me it was all ‘vicious rumours’ and that they were doing fine.”

The receiver said in a statement that it would not honour outstanding gift vouchers or refund deposits paid for goods, leaving customers to join the queue of unsecured creditors — meaning they are unlikely to recoup the full amount owed to them. The comapny’s Facebook page has been flooded with angry complaints from customers who purchased or received gift cards or spent hundreds of dollars buying products online in Dick Smith’s pre-Christmas fire sale that have yet to receive them — if ever.

An employee at Dick Smith’s Gawler Place store in Adelaide declined to speak to The Adelaide Advertiser yesterday, saying that staff had been gagged and any inquiries had to go through a generic helpline.

“But you’ll probably be waiting a while because a lot of people will be calling that number,” the employee said.

Anger is in abundance on the company’s Facebook page, with many labelling the company’s pre-Christmas cash grab for gift cards as a “scam”.

“This is exactly the same as having your wallet ripped from your hands and watching the thief run off into the sunset,” Stephen Davis wrote.

Ms Romeo, who succeeded now-Labor MLC Peter Malinauskas as state secretary late last year, said the SDA’s priority was to ensure the jobs and entitlements of workers are protected.

“Entitlements are one of our key concerns — all existing employee entitlements have been frozen,” she said.

This means that annual and long-service leave are now unsecured debts, no longer accessible by employees — though annual leave previously scheduled is being honoured.

SDA delegates will be visiting Dick Smith’s SA stores in the coming days to seek further feedback from its members.

Meanwhile, independent SA senator Nick Xenophon has asked the Senate Economics References Committee to look into the events leading up to this week’s receivership.

The outspoken senator is also calling on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to investigate the matter.

“We also need to know whether ASIC has in fact been asleep on the front porch while Dick Smith Holdings unravelled,” he said.

Private equity firm Anchorage Capital Partners floated Dick Smith in December 2013 at $2.20 a share, valuing the company at $520 million. Before being placed in a trading halt, its shares closed at 35.5 cents. A receiver and administrator were appointed soon after.

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- Additional reporting by Dana McCauley