By James Wells
SYDNEY: A Bing Lee store has been caught selling a ‘new’ 1GB Sony Memory Stick with a new digital camera which already contained images of the retailer’s recent incentive trip with LG Electronics in Korea.
A story was published about the incident in today’s Daily Telegraph newspaper titled ‘What Bing Lee did on my holiday’. The story also received coverage on the Nine Network’s Today show and the Seven Network’s Sunrise show.
Bing Lee director, Lionel Lee told Current.com.au this morning that the Memory Stick, which sold at the company’s Castle Hill store, contained images of a company conference hosted by LG Electronics in June.
“It was an honest mistake,” Lee said.
“I have seen the tapes of the television shows and they have treated it as very tongue in cheek.”
The Daily Telegraph reported that the Memory Stick purchased by Brian Holloway contained 98 images from the Bing Lee/LG conference.
Among the images on the Memory Stick were photographs of a coach which featured a large banner which read: “2006 Most Valued Australian Partner – Bing Lee”.
"It was in the right packaging and it didn’t look as if it had been tampered with but when I went to take photos in Costa Rica it had obviously been used before," Holloway told The Daily Telegraph.
"A message kept coming up on the camera saying, ‘card error’ and it wouldn’t take any photos, so I looked at it more closely and found it was actually full," he said.
Current.com.au understands that Holloway is a long-serving customer of the retailer and personally knew the founder of the retailer – Bing Lee himself.
Prior to contacting the Daily Telegraph, the Holloway family found the incident so amusing they considered sending into a segment on the Ten Network’s Rove Live program known as ‘What The …?’ which features humorous content supplied by viewers.
Bing Lee Castle Hill store manager, Tony Ta, told the Daily Telegraph he believed the Memory Stick could have been purchased by a staff member and left in a printer after it was used.
Bing Lee general manager, Phil Moujeas, told Current.com.au that the company has a policy of only selling new merchandise, unless the products were marked as demonstration or display stock.
“With demonstration and display stock, the customer is advised beforehand and they get a discount for buying these models. In all other cases we sell new stock, which represents hundreds of thousands of products every year,” Moujeas said.
“Bing Lee has been in business for 49 years and I have been in the business for seven years and I am not aware of anything like this happening before.
“We are trying to get to the bottom of this issue as we are treating it seriously, even though a lot of other people are regarding it as tongue-in-cheek. If improper conduct has occurred though, we will be taking appropriate action – but at this stage, we have no evidence that this has occurred.”