Le site dicksmith.com.au est-il sûr ?

Dick Smith is (or I should say "once was") a reputable company, but has lately failed to deliver on price compared to it's competitors. They are very fond of stocking "Dick Smith" generic (like the no frills brands in supermarkets) because they have a much better profit margin on them, and they have no direct competition for those products from other retailers (so you can't compare the price of THE SAME PRODUCT at different shops). They are (at least in my personal opinion (and I build computers from scratch and even build my own circuit boards if I need to) they are HUGELY overpriced on items that can be compared in other shops (like brand name electronics). It is not unusual to see them retailing a product for 50% to almost 100% more than a competitor in the area. I am referring to a Western Digital My Book 2TB USB 3 external drive which they were trying to sell for $270 or $280 (can't remember the exact price but I CAN remeber the price I paid for 2 of them from OfficeWorks for $149 Each). They don't even bother to match (or even lower the price) after I told them that an identical item is available for a much smaller price (at least 50% cheaper) elsewhere on a few occasions 2, 3 or 4 times (I don't want to bother them it's their business), I just wanted to point it out and see what they do. Well, what they do (in case of the hard drives I mentioned - they put them at the top of the list when you go to browse their online catalogue. Well there is nothing wrong with offloading an unprofitable, non-selling product by putting it first in the list. WHAT IS WRONG is that the put it at the top when the list of items in a category (for example hard drives) is shown from the most popular to least popular (default setting on Dick Smith website). I just cannot believe a hard drive that is ALMOST TWICE THE PRICE of oneavailable from a nearby competitor, is their most popular (selling) item. They do this for all their overpriced stock (it is misleading advertising - if it can be proven in court they can face hefty fines). The only way you are not going to see overpriced items on top of the first page is if you sort the results by price, or by name (the other sorting options). WORST BY FAR - they have a way for users/buyers to rate the products they sell and I think they have been reasonably honest here as there are negative and positive comments for many items, but the BSOLUTE LOWEST THING THEY HAVE DONE is put up "reviews" from the Western Digital site's own "ratings" section. They even put a WD logo and say on the website that these come from another source. THOSE "reviews" are completely made up as they showed the date and username of the people posting on the WD site (and I went to the Western Digital site and there were no such people writing any reviews on that date for that product. So I let Western Digital know about it by email and I am pleased to say that Dick Smith seem to have removed the fake reviews now (24 May 2012). Those reviews apeeared about 2-3 weeks ago tops (and as I have bought 5 Western Digital hard drives in the last 7 weeks - 2 external 3 internal) so I was checking all 6 local retailers' sites for comparisons in price, so I know the fake reviews only existed for a couple of week maybe - but how low can Dick Smith go !!! Well it seems that now they have plenty of reviews, but now they tend to be wildly positive, where only 2-3 weeks ago there were more or less honest and balanced. To cut a long story short (lol) they just can't be trusted anymore. Yes they still have a big chain of stores, and you can get "reasonably cheap" stuff from them - but only on sale, clearance items, or catalogue. But even then, you are not saving that much, if anything if you just shopped around you would likely find someone else has the same product for the same price, or less. UPDATE: they now stock the external drive for $219 (instead of $270-$280 only a few weeks ago) BUT IT"S STILL $70 more expensive than an identical one from OfficeWorks (and I bought them for $149 from OfficeWorks - one about 7 weeks ago, the other about 5 weeks ago, and their price hasn't changed).