Discount King vs. Bargains Plus: Saliva, CCTV, spying and price-copy claims in Leongatha spat



Anna Riccardi (with her one-year-old son, Julian)from Discount King, Leongatha. The new shop’s security video footage has triggered a shop turf war.

BATTLELINES have been drawn in Leongatha’s main street in a fiery spat between competing discount stores.

Anna and Daniel Riccardi opened Discount King about 10 weeks ago, frustrating the owners of nearby store Bargains Plus, a shop that has been there for 12 years.


CCTV from outside the Discount King store appears to show Mr Wei walking past and pausing briefly near the window.


The video was uploaded to Facebook and viewed 14,000 times.


The photo that was taken of the window appears to show saliva.

The Riccardis found saliva on their front window on Sunday night and, when they checked their CCTV footage, it appeared to show Bargains Plus owner Chun Wei was the culprit.




The outraged couple posted the footage on Facebook and it quickly became the talk of the town, igniting a war of words between the shops with allegations of spying, price copying and customer bans.

Public sentiment quickly swung against Bargains Plus, but Mr Wei’s wife, Li Zhang, denied he spat on the rival shop.

She said he “just passed, just look at something, don’t do nothing”.

But Mr Riccardi said people could “make up their own minds”.

“It honestly doesn’t bother me, but we caught it on camera so it’s a big slap in the face back to him,” Mr Riccardi said.

Ms Riccardi said they opened Discount King — next to their other store, Party Planet, in McCartin St — because customers wanted products they used to stock at another shop.

She said they were careful to be different from Bargains Plus and specialised in selling arts and crafts.

“When we go to suppliers, when we ask if they supply anyone else in town, if they say yes, we move on and if they say no we do business to keep it fair,” Ms Riccardi said.

“We don’t want to do the same things everyone else does, it’s a small town.”

But Ms Zhang claimed they copied their stock and it was affecting their business.

“They open new, they don’t care,” she said.



Ms Zhang alleged that Ms Riccardi was trying to spy on them.

“One day that girl come in here. She’s looking at everything,” Ms Zhang said.

“You can’t make a photo, and talk on phone — this $2, that $3. She no pay one cent.”

Ms Zhang threatened to call the police and told her to leave.

But Ms Riccardi said she was merely browsing and her family had since been banned from visiting Bargains Plus because “they think we’re checking prices”.

She said she was “shaking” after watching the CCTV footage of the alleged spitting incident.

The Riccardis contemplated calling the police or confronting the Bargains Plus owners but decided to post the CCTV footage to show shoppers “what we’re going through”.

“There’s competition everywhere, we’re not enemies ... It’s just ridiculous,” Ms Riccardi said. “I still can’t believe it.”





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