Put down your pitchforks and call off the lynching mob... they probably just misspoke and meant iWork (as another poster mentioned), which would need to be purchased.
The story about the standalone graphics card is ridiculous, but I know that some of the computer sales people are clueless (especially if you get a 16 year old kid who is on his first job).
To be fair, many end users are dumb too. When I used to sell computers as an HP rep, I've had a few customers ask me if buying a new monitor was going to wipe out their files. And I haven't met many customers who did not refer to their computer towers/units as "hard drives."
I don't know the whole situation but I am picturing this guy being nervous and trying to make his sale (and thus mistaking iLife for iWork) when some crazy customer butts in out of the blue and tells the customer they are being scammed and some such none sense.
Rather than trying to accuse the guy of scamming the customer -- potentially causing a disturbance and drama that is not welcome in retail stores, perhaps you -- if you felt so inclined to intervene - could have politely interrupted, say you couldn't help but overhear, and asked him to repeat himself and sought clarification first, which may have revealed the source of the miscommunication (which could have been quite harmless, and not a "rip off" for the CUSTOMER, even if it would be a rip off for you because you can handle all that stuff yourself).
If I misspoke and someone came up to my customer while I was trying to make a sale and they told the customer I was scamming them, I'd be PO'ed too and I wouldn't have even given a warning just straight up kicked that person out of the store.
Let's not make a federal case out of this. It is impossible to quality control customer experiences when a company has upwards of 30,000 employees. This talk of lawyers, BBB, etc. is completely ridiculous (from a business standpoint). No one is going to hire a $400 per hour lawyer to look into a $79-value incident, unless you can prove that the company has from the top directed its employees to lie (which I am sure they don't).
Apple's own employees have been known to say silly things or even "lie" to people (as can be revealed by searches on this forum). Its always best to do your own research before getting into any situations and take whatever you hear with a grain of salt. Misinformation and miscommunication inevitably happens in large organizations, but it is very rarely malicious.
(I once had a TCF bank teller tell me that I could not get my name off of a business checking account without closing the ENTIRE account. I said it was ridiculous, as adding/removing people from business accounts is something that is done routinely and closing a WHOLE account every time someone left the company would be quite disruptive to the business. I don't believe the person was lying to me maliciously, they probably were just clueless as that branch being inside a Jewel grocery store may not have handled many business cases. A visit to a proper branch that dealt with business accounts resolved the issue in 5 minutes.)
Notice: I didn't call lawyers, the BBB, or accused the person of malicious activities in the process. In fact the account manager at the proper branch and I had a good laugh over it. Lesson here: relax, people!
