Apple Store in Georgia Turns Away Farsi-speaking Customer

[captaincharisma]

[citation][nom]JamesBondage[/nom]hittin Georgia for this? Seems APPLE is the one to blame. But it sound like something tech guys would do. go after the southern states when the northern states are the ones with the biggest and most close minded A-holes in the country.[/citation]

you think apple knows every employee at every store they have? it was the salesclerk who is at fault for racial profiling.

FAIL

 

[wolley74]

i like how they said she could BUY her iPad online, that's bullcrap in any company

 

[10tacle]

[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]it's Georgia. no surprise there[/citation]


[citation][nom]halcyon[/nom]You're right...one of our more "backwards" states. ...makes the whole US look bad...something we don't need help with.[/citation]

Actually these stores are in and around Atlanta, which is a huge melting pot city of the entire southeast, let alone Georgia.More people are NOT from Georgia originally and live in the greater metro Atlanta area. It's population explosion over the last two decades has been from northeaster, midwestern, and western transplants. These days, it's about as redneck and backwards and southern as San Francisco. I know. I live in it Atlanta. Learn a little about other areas in America instead of just mindlessly bashing an area and making ignorant stereotypical hate comments of which you clearly have no clue about.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]drwho1[/nom]So if I go to the store and I speak in Spanish (which I do), and someone thinks that I might be Cuban (which I'm not)[/citation]No way, they'll just assume you're Mexican.

 

[ugoing2]

I remember during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. A customer was not able to purchase tickets because he was his address was New Mexico. The sales rep said, "I don't care if your from New Mexico or Old Mexico..." BTW: Her manager wouldn't let the guy tickets either.

http/articles.latimes.com/1996-03-01/sports/sp-41795_1_summer-olympics-ticket

 

[Antimatter79]

I'm from Georgia and I can say first hand that what has happened to these people is very typical. It doesn't matter if you're in rural areas full of rebel flag waving hillbillies or upscale areas (such as Alpharetta, mentioned in the article), there is never a shortage of bigoted, racist, stereotyping people who find no other "fault" with someone beyond their skin color and/or perceived nationality. A lot of people love to fool themselves into believing that racial discrimination is largely a thing of the past, but I can guarantee you that there are plenty of minorities just in Georgia alone that can tell you otherwise, and you definitely don't have to go looking for it to experience it.

 

[okibrian]

[citation][nom]fudoka711[/nom]Correct me if I'm wrong, but if its against the policy of Apple to sell its products to people from those nations...how would that work when purchasing something online? What's stopping them? And yes, we're assuming someone actually wants to buy one of their products.Funny how Apple doesn't support communist nations and also singles out everyone of Iranian descent even though we know not all Iranian's are terrorists. All the while Apple makes over 50% profits off their iPads which are made in China under grueling working conditions and pay (no matter what any committee tells us...its way worse than it would be if it were manufactured in the USA, Canada, or Europe).[/citation]

Correct me if I'm wrong...

OK, I think I will.

What would stop them from buying online? Ah, the shipping addresses. Now people can find was to get around things, but the address would be the first defense.

Apple doesn't support communist nations...

You do know Apple doesn't make US law right? Did you miss the part where the article said U.S. holds complete trade embargoes with Iran before you started Apple bashing? That would mean it's the US government that will not allow the sale to those places. Now you could have said it was wrong for the people in the store to assume that this customer was not a US citizen because of the language she was speaking, but you didn't.

As for Apple manufacturing in China. While that has nothing to do with this article I think you would be correct to assume they are doing this for pure greed. The thing is just about any other major electronic company or PC manufacturer is doing the same thing. Almost everything in your house is made in China. Oh, and most of that electronic stuff was made at Foxconn (the very same place where Apple devices are made).

See source here on Foxconn customers: http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

Apple bash all you want, but know your facts!

 

[Antimatter79]

[citation][nom]alextheblue[/nom]No way, they'll just assume you're Mexican.[/citation]

That's exactly right. People are so ignorant and willfully stupid. Anybody who is brown-skinned and speaks Spanish is "Mexican" in GA. If you're from the far east, you're "Chinese". Middle East earns you "Indian" or "A-Rab". Some morons here can't even tell the difference between someone who is East Asian or Hispanic, and they just call them Mexican. The idiocy is astounding. Don't even get me started on the ones who love to say "if you don't like it, go back to your own country..." Of course this is b/c so many non-ethnic people living in GA obviously were here first, even before Native Americans.

 

[okibrian]

[citation][nom]fudoka711[/nom]Correct me if I'm wrong, but if its against the policy of Apple to sell its products to people from those nations...how would that work when purchasing something online? What's stopping them? And yes, we're assuming someone actually wants to buy one of their products.Funny how Apple doesn't support communist nations and also singles out everyone of Iranian descent even though we know not all Iranian's are terrorists. All the while Apple makes over 50% profits off their iPads which are made in China under grueling working conditions and pay (no matter what any committee tells us...its way worse than it would be if it were manufactured in the USA, Canada, or Europe).[/citation]

Correct me if I'm wrong...

OK, I think I will.

What would stop them from buying online? Ah, the shipping addresses. Now people can find was to get around things, but the address would be the first defense.

Apple doesn't support communist nations...

You do know Apple doesn't make US law right? Did you miss the part where the article said U.S. holds complete trade embargoes with Iran before you started Apple bashing? That would mean it's the US government that will not allow the sale to those places. Now you could have said it was wrong for the people in the store to assume that this customer was not a US citizen because of the language she was speaking, but you didn't.

As for Apple manufacturing in China. While that has nothing to do with this article I think you would be correct to assume they are doing this for pure greed. The thing is just about any other major electronic company or PC manufacturer is doing the same thing. Almost everything in your house is made in China. Oh, and most of that electronic stuff was made at Foxconn (the very same place where Apple devices are made).

See source here on Foxconn customers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn
Apple bash all you want, but know your facts!

 

[okibrian]

Foxconn info:
http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

 

[_Cubase_]

Did they tell her: "You're speaking it wrong!"

 

[koga73]

woo looks like apple finally did something right. they should turn down customers speaking anything other than english

 

[Guest]

I don't think anyone here is making sense. The article states the person never talked about where the phone was going. According to the logic here, it would be illegal to sell food to an Iranian tourist.

Export means exporting. Not selling inside the country to someone from a banned export country. As long as the product isn't intended to go back to that country, no law is broken. If they really said they wanted to ship the product there, that's another thing, but I haven't read that in any article, just by posters who might have bad reading comprehension.

 

[Sonny73N]

Look like the government had successfully brainwashed most of their people. I can't imagine Americans are that stupid. Well, since she's American citizen, I hope Apple get sued the f off. As for me, an Vietnamese-American but not that stupid, will never purchase another Apple product again.

Btw this type of racial discrimination wasn't what I was looking for when I risked my life acrossed the ocean 25 years ago.

I wonder how did they know what Iranian sounds like? Sure the heck I don't.

 

[10tacle]

[citation][nom]dizzy_davidh[/nom]Being from the UK it may sound strange to US and other international folk that it sounds very odd when someone says they are 'anything' - American, as in Cuban-American, Iranian-American etc.Outside the new-world migrants aren't routinely (or ever) labelled with their ethnic history and their citizenship details. I would be an 'Irish-Britain' in that were the case and I've never heard of a 'French-German', for example.[/citation]

Very good observation, and as an American who has traveled across the pond many times, I've never really thought about that. Who the hell has ever heard of an African-Russian? Or an English-Brazilian? No, we have become a nation of feel-good sissies wreaking of political correctness and identity issues.

The great catch-phrase of the decade is "diversity" as in we must "celebrate diversity." We are having it shoved down our throats from grade school to the corporate world. The individual is dead, and now everyone is group identity based. Classic liberalism run amok.

 

[Sonny73N]

I've asked myself for years why American hate Iranian so much? After years of reading, thanks to google and the Internet, I've come to conclusion that American need to have enemies so they won't be disintegrated. Beside, the white is pretty racist.

 

[okibrian]

[citation][nom]Sonny73N[/nom]I've asked myself for years why American hate Iranian so much? After years of reading, thanks to google and the Internet, I've come to conclusion that American need to have enemies so they won't be disintegrated. Beside, the white is pretty racist.[/citation]
No, it's only the white racists that make the paper or get reported over and over on the new. The US (my home) seems to be doing a good job of dividing itself. By the way, "Beside, the white is pretty racist." sound like a pretty racist view to me.

 

[NuclearShadow]

Ah, xenophobia and racism. I am not surprised at all. This also was a short lived topic not too long ago if businesses have the right to discriminate. Ron Paul actually spoke in favor of this type of behavior, one of the topics his zealot followers tend to try to avoid.

the Apple employee she spoke to apologized and told her she could buy her iPad online.

So, instead of bringing this to the superiors and getting this set straight for the woman to go back and purchase the iPad and receive a apology directly from those employed in that store they decide it would be best to still not welcome her inside the facility and encourage her to buy online. Real classy Apple.

If I owned a retail store and one of my employees did this I would apologize, have the employee apologize and then fire them right in-front of that customer. No way in hell am I letting my employees discriminate on the job.

 

[Marcus52]

[citation][nom]southernshark[/nom]Actually its not. They asked her what she was going to do with it and she said ship it to Iran. It would actually have been illegal to sell it to her, since the USA has a trade embargo with Iran. It also violated company policy.If she had said, use it....... then it would have been ok.[/citation]

No, they didn't ask her, that's the whole point; it says so in the article, read a bit more carefully.

The "illegal" part would not be Apple selling the product to an American citizen, it would be the American citizen giving the part to a friend or family member that was going to Iran to use the device in that country.

 

[sykozis]

@Okibrian
At address doesn't exactly prove where the device will actually end up. It's fairly easy to buy a product online, receive it and ship it to another country. Either of the people in the article could easily purchase the desired device online, have it shipped to a US address, then turn around and ship the device to Iran....

[citation][nom]southernshark[/nom]Actually its not. They asked her what she was going to do with it and she said ship it to Iran. It would actually have been illegal to sell it to her, since the USA has a trade embargo with Iran. It also violated company policy.If she had said, use it....... then it would have been ok.[/citation]
Do you have a source????

The 19-year-old was speaking Farsi with her Uncle....and nothing is mentioned in the article about her intending to ship the iPad to Iran. The other was trying to purchase an iPhone and the article makes no mention of him intending to ship the iPhone to Iran....so, are you ignorantly assuming based on nationality or do you have a source that states such?