An Apple Store employee refused to sell an iPad to an Iranian-American girl. He stated that apple had a strict policy against selling merchandise to Iran, due to current international relations between Iran and the US. The Georgia college student and her dad were shocked and returned the next day to explain that she was and American Citizen and did not intend to take this product to Iran, but to give to her sister for use within the Unites States.
The Apple Store Employee, after overhearing customer Sahar Sabet speaking Farsi to another Apple Store salesperson (also of Iranian descent) refused to sell her the product citing store rules regarding the legality of the sell of good between the United States and Iran.
Sabet returned to the store with a television crew hoping the someone at the store would change the former employees his mind. She was turned down again with the employee pointing to the Apple policy which prohibits sales that will be exported to North Korea, Iran or any other country the United States does not trade with.
After the incident an outraged Sabet said, “It’s discrimination, racial profiling. He doesn’t have any business asking which country I was from.”
This is not the first time a Georgia Apple retailer has prohibited a customer of Iranian decent from purchasing their products. Another American citizen with Iranian heritage tried to purchase an iPhone from an Atlanta Apple store and suffered the same fate as Sabet, according to WSBTV, GA. This man was accompanied by a friend travelling on a student visa from Iran. According to the man, no employee asked if the phone would end up in Iran.
Sabet, when asked if she could say something to the CEO of Apple, had this to say “I’v never felt to humiliated, upset and shocked about something. Especially in this day and age of 2012. I know that our country has a history of racial discrimination, but I never thought that I would be discriminated against…….In an Apple Store of all places.”
