en authority from the receiver before undertaking a range of routine tasks such as placing orders or accepting deliveries of goods. “We are immediately seeking a sale of the business as a going concern and advertisements will appear in the national newspapers shortly,” Ferrier Hodgson receiver James Stewart said in a circular to employees. “We expect that the prospect of achieving a going concern sale will become clear in the next six to eight weeks.” The time scale raises the prospect that Dick Smith stores may run out of stock after chairman Rob Murray said this week the retailer did not have funding to order required inventory for the next four to six weeks. Coles says it will exchange Dick Smith gift cards bought at its stores after the receivers at the fallen electronic retailer said they would not honour them. Coles will not offer a refund because it has already passed on the sale proceeds of the gift cards to Dick Smith, but says it will swap the cards for Coles cards of an equal value provided customers can prove they bought them from the supermarket giant. Coles is the latest company to offer customers recompense over the unredeemable cards, with online department store Kogan offering credit and virtual voucher startup, Prezzee offering to swap them for other cards. The consumer watchdog is speaking with the receivers to find out how the collapse of the electronics retailer, which employees about 3,330 people across 393 stores in Australia and NZ, will affect customers. The first meeting of Dick Smith’s creditors will take place on January 14 in  Sydney. The purpose of the meeting is to determine wether to appoint a committee of creditors and, if so, who the committee members will be. Creditors may also remove to administrators, McGrathNicol, by resolution and appoint someone else as administrator of the company. A separate meeting for NZ creditors will be held in Auckland.