In Southern California, a customer would have let the brakes fail, and obtained a nice out of court settlement.
The front to back swap is not that difficult, but as others have said required a bit of additional work, no idea why the springs were involved. My guess is the rear brake has a fixing nut and the front has an allen key nut and was drilled out to accept that.
There are other ways to do this, but it should function. If you swap the pad/holders around so the open end faces aft on both the current front and rear brake you should be good to go. I have found that some rims cause squeal more than others, same calipers and pads.