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mattopotamus

macrumors G5
Jun 12, 2012
14,666
5,879
It's common practice in many retail stores to keep empty boxes out front, and the real stuff in the back (or at least under lock and key).

Maybe that's what was going on?

No, they were definitely the real products. I just think they were grabbing from the back first or maybe if it got too crazy then they would use that stock.
 

Esoom

macrumors 6502
Apr 30, 2010
415
51
Colorado
Going to go with a couple of wild ass guesses here:

There is likely some elasticity in the online reservation system, if someone has reserved a mini, they haven't shown up to pick it up, that frees up stock Apple is holding, or they know they're getting a shipment the next day and reserve one of those units for the person that has a reserved unit, and I suspect that when they pull the minis from the back to put out front on the express table, they're taken out of the "available" inventory, and assumed sold.

I live in Los Angeles, and haven't been able to reserve one for local pick up (LTE any capacity) since they've been available, finally got one from Mac Mall. (or at least I hope I did, it hasn't shipped yet).
 

Johnny Alien

macrumors member
Nov 17, 2012
98
0
My guess is that it's a haphazard system with poor training. They probably remove the expres stock from the standard inventory database so that it give priority to people in the store and that most of the sales staff has been trained to just check that database when looking for stock. Seeing that there was nothing there they never bother to check that express stock. Just a guess.
 

Jinzen

macrumors 6502
Oct 16, 2012
348
36
No one gave the go ahead for anything. One "sorry we are all out" would have been completely sufficient. If you don't have any instock you don't have any instock...unless apple store managers can make products simple appear out of thin air.

Doesn't quite work that way.

They may have stock and then sell out by the time you get there

They may have limited stock so they tell people they are sold out

They may have limited stock but then suddenly get a shipment in

They may have very limited stock and so one unit could be requested by several customers at once, resulting in one or more customers who obviously get the "sold out" response
 

GoGo1108

macrumors newbie
Aug 13, 2012
15
0
They may have very limited stock and so one unit could be requested by several customers at once, resulting in one or more customers who obviously get the "sold out" response

Perfectly acceptable excuse, however it doesn't take 3 associates in the span of 3 minutes to deliver the same message to the same customer.
 

184550

Guest
May 8, 2008
1,980
2
Clearly you had to be there as this isn't translating well for you. Each of the employees was sent by the previous employee. None of the conversations started with "how can I help you" but rather with I "understand you want to purchase a mini". Maybe that's normal happenstance in the retailers you visit, but I've never experienced anything like that. A simple yes/no from one employee and then we both move on with our lives.

Perfectly acceptable excuse, however it doesn't take 3 associates in the span of 3 minutes to deliver the same message to the same customer.

Obviously not. You've been consumed by this horrific incident for at least the past two day it seems. :rolleyes:
 
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