This story may sound like some sort of hilariously zany plotline you might find on a primetime television sitcom, but apparently it’s the real deal. And while I don’t think that notepads are as archaic as others might claim, I can understand one’s initial irritation upon receiving a stack of them in place of an Apple iPad.

Such is the case of Ciera Billups, a woman who was in the market for such a handy little device to help her two-year old daughter with speech therapy. So she embarked on an adventure to a local Walmart, where she procured what she thought was an iPad 3. Unfortunately, when the box was opened and its contents revealed, Ciera was understandably horrified by what she found inside.

Notepads. Stacks and stacks of ordinary, everyday notepads.

You might be thinking to yourself, “This lady is shady. She probably just popped the box open and swapped the iPad for the notepads in the parking lot”. Ciera claims this isn’t the case. However, the manager on-duty at the Walmart where she purchased the device said she her story didn’t add up. The police seemed to feel the same way, which means that this poor woman ended up dropping an insane amount of money for an item she could have picked up at the local dollar store for next to nothing. Hey, at least it came in an Apple box, right?

If this were an isolated incident, perhaps you’d be inclined to side with Walmart. After all, trusting people these days is rather difficult, to say the very least. Sadly, this isn’t the first time someone has purchased an iPad from the nation’s biggest retailer and ended up with nothing but paper and an increasingly throbbing headache to show for it. However, not all cases ended the way Ciera’s did. In fact, a woman in Roseville, Michigan experienced the exact same problem, except she managed to convince the store to issue her a complete refund.

Over the years, others have claimed the same thing, except they didn’t get a box full of notepads for their troubles. They received a shredded phonebook. Another example is the poor sap who bought a new Nintendo DS and wound up with a small box packed with rocks. In most instances, a refund and an apology are issued, but not always.

On a lesser note, I’ve purchased no less than three DVDs from Walmart, only to find that one or all of the discs in the case were missing. When I brought the issue to their attention, I was immediately treated like a criminal, one that was trying to pull some sort of elaborate scheme to acquire more copies of the same film. Who in their right mind wants two copies of the Bruce Willis/Damon Wayans flick “The Last Boy Scout”? Seriously?

My advice: The next time you purchase an expensive electronic gadget from the likes of Walmart or its contemporaries, pop open the box and have a look at what’s inside. That way, if you end up with someone’s dirty laundry wrapped in old newspapers, they can’t claim you’re trying to pull a fast one. And for the record, I still don’t own a copy of “The Last Boy Scout” on DVD, and that makes me sad. Very sad, indeed.