Fry's Electronics sales people rarely know the product, inventory, or compatibility, and quite often make things up.

I love the store, the access, the inventory - but it's not a place I'd put on the list for knowledgeable service.

And as stated below, Fry's is a good place for fictitious advice. According to them, XP was discontinued long before MS extended sales of XP for netbooks.

I hate the physical stores, I hate the App Store.

1) Lost my power cord while traveling, so I thought I'd jump into the Apple Store and pick up a new one. Should be an in and out thing... took 1.5 hours of me just waiting around the store for them to sell me a power cord. This was in Sydney. Once I actually got to talk to someone, it still took 20 minutes. So painful. "Genius" is Apple for happy little idiot.

2) Tried to buy 8 laptops for a dev team. Bought them all online, went to pick them up... credit card cleared, no errors or messages on the website. Get to the store, "We're sorry, Sir. We can't give you more than 3 laptops per day." Uh? So you want me to come back once a day for 2 more days to pick up these laptops? "Yes Sir, that's our policy." It took a call to some regional corporate sales clown to get them to hand me 8 laptops the same day I paid for them.

3) Every try and roll out software to a team using the App Store as a source for any of that software? Is it the company Apple Account? Is it their Apple Account? Which account has the stupid software licenses bound to it, and how do I set it so I can use the company Apple Account to install the software, but not leave my master password for the company saved on their computer... I don't want to have to give them that password just so they can keep their system up-to-date... rather they just log in and expense software... nope, it's a cluster trying to keep it all updated once you have more than one account providing software. Apple does not care in the slightest about corporate users. I should have some sort of provisioning interface that lets me grant rights to use software licenses I own to their personal accounts... that's probably not pretty enough for Apple though.

2) I've run into this before (with iPads rather than MBP), so I know you're likely factual here. The business sales person said if I'd ordered from him, wouldn't have been an issue, but consumer orders live by consumer rules. He did at least tell me that it was two per person, not two per order, so I called my friend who lived near Valley Faire Mall at the time and had him bring four of his kids. Yes, it was stupid, but myself, him, and each of the four kids walked out with two iPads each in our arms.

3) pro-tip: check out Apple VPP. Very easy to sign up for and trust me, it's everything you need and more to make this a smooth process to handle.

I have to chime in "me too" here; it's hard to believe that Apple is this stupid, but they are. No iPad Air 2 cases in the front of the store!

Here's my story, not that it matters much but maybe when Apple eventually goes bust someone will chronicle the litany of stupid decisions they made along the way.

I bought an iPad Air 2 over Black Friday weekend, good price from an authorized seller. A few days later I received it.

I go to the Apple store to select a case. I can't find any. Some sales drone says the cases are in back, since they only have a "limited" amount of display space.

Directly in front of us are a bunch of pegs on the wall. Each peg is capable of holding quite a few cases. But each peg has exactly 1 iPad Pro grey case. There are six pegs next to each other, two rows of three. Each of the six pegs has exactly 1 iPad Pro grey case. Right next to these pegs are a bunch more, each with exactly 1 iPad Pro case, just a different color. Overall, literally dozens of pegs on the wall, each with exactly 1 iPad Pro case.

Yes, the display space is "limited", but they could get a wee bit more inventory out front if they didn't deliberately act like idiots about it. It must make sense to someone but not to me.

I walked out. I wasn't about to stand there while he rummaged around back for something to show me. I went to a local department store and got a decent case for a lot less than I would have paid Apple for one.

It would be understandable if the iPad Air 2 was discontinued. But as of 30 seconds ago I can still go to the Apple website and buy one. So, WTF???

2.) Yeah that's dumb. Maybe it's a stocking thing since it's Australia? Never heard of anything like that in the US.

3.) Almost everything on the mac store exists outside of it as well, but I agree it is somewhat designed more for consumers. You could use deployment tools if the source isn't App Store, or a 'family' account that shares purchases among users. Though I agree that's not ideal. Supposedly they're improving management with some new tools similar to how apps can be managed on iOS.

The max number of laptops was in Austin, the store in The Domain.

Just looked into the Volume Purchase Program as suggested in another post... interesting but doesn't help me 3 years ago when I had the problem. Glad they've made moves to fix it.

What I liked about HN was that it wasn't Reddit. You feel good because you can downvote me? Hooray, downvotes really add to the conversation.

Not much point in talking with someone who thinks I'm lying. And I don't give a shit about internet points, so keep downvoting me.

- Bored, doesn't-give-a-damn drone takes the broken thing and tosses it in a cart. Done.

- Mid-level manager gives me a hard time, and I wind up having an argument and threatening to reverse charges on my credit card.

My favorite episode: I buy a computer, get it home, and it won't even POST. Try to return it. They say, "We can't take this back, it's broken and we can't put it back on the shelf." WTF?

Yeah, you've been to a different Fry's . . .