I Think, Therefore iPhone
I had been wanting an iPhone for some time, but the only local carrier available to me was not good—not even just price-wise—but with signals and coverage too. Anyway, out of nowhere, a new challenger carrier appeared and you could purchase from their website. Unfortunately, I dithered around too long, and they sold out a couple of hours after launch.
Being a stubborn nerd, I didn’t want to take no for an answer. Now, the following will seem weird to people, but I make websites for a living. I have developer tools installed and love to check out how other sites do things, so I opened up a browser inspector. Lo and behold, the online store did not remove the “Add to Cart” button from the page, but simply hid it with CSS.
I “unhid” it and started the checkout process, assuming it would do an inventory check and shut me down. Nope. I made it through the checkout process for my shiny new iPhone! A couple of days later, I got a call from the carrier, and I freaked out thinking they were calling to bust me. Turns out, they just called to verify addresses for new customers: all was well.
I’m still a loyal customer five years later, and I’m so sorry to the poor chap who didn’t get his iPhone because of a lousy online store that let me order it instead.