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Seeing a lot of us fell on the unlucky side of dealing with Dick Smith in it's later days, would you trust it again now Kogan own it?
Will You Trust Dick Smith Again?
mittymitt on 13/05/2016 - 16:10
Last edited 13/05/2016 - 17:13
Last edited 13/05/2016 - 17:13
Poll Options
- 6Maybe in a few years
- 11Yes
- 66No
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Nothing to do with Dick Smith now. Just Kogan.
Is it weird that I trust Kogan less than DSE?
Deplorable company, even worse customer service!
I find Kogan is a good store if spending less that say $300 on something like a toy
DSE were trustworthy. Never had any problems with them before the bankruptcy.
It was the liquidators who were complete a-holes.
Not in the past so no again.
I am pretty sure that Kogan would get rid of the Dick Smith branding in say… 6 months to a year.
Honestly, the only reason why Kogan took on the DS branding is for the customer contact details, so that they can send you spam.I agree, it also looks good for their company and attracts attention "Kogan saves dick smith"
Um, the customer contact details have nothing at all to do with branding.
I see no reason why they would ditch the brand because apart from anything else the website at the dicksmith.com.au is (presumably) generating a lot of organic traffic for free.
Actually its the contracts with suppliers kogan wants. I read a business article about it and they made a compelling case that kogan could grow hugely simply by leveraging new supplers and the back end of Dick Smiths e.g. logistics, etc.
Let's get one thing straight - nobody trusts a Dick.
We all know what porn is about though.
After Kogan screwed their mobile users, why would anyone trust them?
No longer offering a service is hardly screwing your customers … it wasn't in their hands whether they could continue the service or not.
Woolworths were in the same boat and handled it very differently. If you defend Kogan for their behaviour you should open your eyes…
Woolworths put their customers first.
Kogan put his money first.
Dick Smith are no more, so the question is moot in my opinion.
I actually think some people trust dick smith more than kogan, perhaps mainly the oldies. Hence Kogan bought dse.
The Dick Smith we see now is nothing more than Ruslan Kogan wearing a cheap $2 Dick Smith T-shirt pretending to be Dick Smith and proudly stating 'I'm an Aussie company and I like Aussie brands!"
while behind the scenes he has truckloads of low-cost OEM grey market crap pouring in from his Chinese suppliers stamped with his KOGAN logo and people are buying them up thinking: yay! Dick Smith lives again!
This isn't Dick Smith anymore. It's Kogan in disguise. He didn't rescue the company, all he did was buy the brand name, intellectual property rights, domain name etc. and have the DSE brand recognition for himself.
What do you think the people before Kogan did when they bought DSE?
As above, but also provided local jobs and stores, for people to walk in and look, try, perhaps buy. They also provided good service in the past, I only ever recall one bad experience with DS (across stores / online) and many, many good experiences.
DS was certainly better a few years ago, but you can't argue the great deals that were around a year or two ago either. Eg PS4 with a few games for less than $400, nobody else was doing that.
Eneloops? Not many retailers beat their online specials.
There is nothing unique about the Dick Smith brand that separates it from Kogan so the question is flawed. If Dick Smith stocked homewares or sold clothes then the question still wouldn't be all that relevant as it would still come down to whether you trust Kogan. But this isn't even that.
Kogan is just selling his products through the domain using the email/customer database. The 'Dick Smith' we all know and love to hate (or hate to love) is dead and Kogan has not done a Lazarus on the lifeless corpse (just co-opted/bought the name to push more of the products he is already importing out the door). I do wish Kogan the best but I'm not all that enthused with this ploy.
Some other people on here are saying Dick was the same as Kogan before Dick died which of course is not true. Dick was a bricks 'n' mortar retailer with an online presence, Kogan is and always has been online/eBay sales nothing more. Dick Smith Holdings were listed on the ASX and were owned by many 'ordinary' Australians for a while (people invested their hard-earned and future in the brand), there was also a longevity to the shops with many franchisee owners taking great pride in selling products in their local area. Kogan is privately owned and not listed on the ASX it is on his head and who really cares if it fails (aside from his partners, overseas manufacturers and banks but still they would just find the next Kogan to do business with).
Dick Smith in all it's various forms (being a green start-up headed by the man himself) to it being sold to Woolworths, then to private equity and listed has always had a physical presence in our lives (people use phrases like 'ingrained in the Australian psyche'). Kogan is the antithesis of that as even though Dick imported pretty much all their home brand products like Kogan (DSE branded import TVs, radios etc.) money went back into the community into sponsoring sporting clubs, training and paying thousands of retail staff. Kogan once put Collingwood badges on generic TV panels and sponsored small-scale motocross. Kogan is not a one-man band entirely but he and his company is an entirely different beast to what Dick was.
One moment that sticks out in my mind when I was browsing the Dick Smith Facebook page (before the Kogan revival of it) was the public outpouring of grief. Along with the many workers losing their jobs, recollections of fond memories, frustrating recent customer experiences etc. a mother posted a video of her autistic son crying at a Melbourne Stars game 'Please don't leave Dick Smith! Please' the child looked about six and was genuinely distraught, the mother took it down amid the usual trolling and insults but for all Kogan's promotion (including weekly segments on ACA) Kogan and his company does not hold a place in the hearts of most Australians.
Maybe in forty-fifty years when the Kogan operation expands hiring and touching the lives of generations of Australians we will look upon Kogan with similar sentimentality and trust but Kogan does not have that at present. All he has bought is the naming and site rights. Dick no longer exists, it's like someone has taken a part of Dick Smith's dead face and made a mask to wear.
I have had a good run with Kogan products including a couple of no fuss refunds for failed products. Dick Smith was not that cheap except for clearance items but the staff in-store were excellent and helped a lot.
A lot of users only knew Dick Smith in the later years, but I remember a store that while not always cheapest, was dependable, whose branded products were usually rebadged superseded models of solid brands such as Sony, and whose franchise owners were usually keen hobbyists or retired techies themselves who employed staff based on their enthusiasm and knowledge [or openness to learn ] of computing, construction and ham radio. The enthusiasm and interest of the sales staff was intrinsic, not trained, and advice and sales were geared towards customer satisfaction and return custom, not the up-coming month's sales targets and potentiality for cross-store promotion under the Dilbert principle.
Woolworth's attempts to compete as another box-shifter was doomed to fail, the strategy of the vulture-fund that took it over was admirable in a David Attenborough documentary sort of way, but now we merely have Jaycar as a vague copy of what it was with twice the overpricing and half the quality :-/I trust Dick Smith, he's great, i don't trust the company though, and i don't trust Kogan.
It's Kogan, not Dick Smith, despite the name. The second I looked at the new website it just screamed "Kogan". The website is basically identical apart from the colour/logo.
There are only 2 reasons he bought the name:
1. Mailing list of customers
2. To have access to major electronics brands who would not touch Kogan due to pressure from major retailers (Harvey's, JB, Dick Smith) who would not stock their brands if they supplied Kogan. But in saying that, so far the Dick Smith web site has lost all the major brands/products stocked by them. So maybe the big suppliers still won't touch Kogan, nor "Dick Smith".It's painful to watch. Not only has Dick Smith died a horrible death, now it's being dragged through the streets by Kogan so everyone can watch.
I have fond memories of Dick Smith stores when i was a kid/teenager. Highly knowledgeable staff who not only knew their stuff, but had a passion for it. Great selection of products and a great place to get all your electronics. Nothing like that exists in bricks and mortar anymore, closest is Jaycar, but it's nowhere near as good as Dick Smith was when Dick Smith was running it.
Yeah it was great when they had all the electrical side of things and you could walk in and just buy a few lengths of cable by the metre and a couple of toggle switches.
Now Jaycar really has the monopoly on that in most areas.
Dick is dead to me. Resurrect Tandy instead.
Bought an S6 from the new kogan dick smith store as it was slightly cheaper than the kogan store. No issues and came quick enough.
Same service as Kogan though, shipped from HK of course.
as much as you trust Kogan, be that yes or no.