So a friend of mine went to buy a PT-AE2000U yesterday (I bought one a few months ago and love it).

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to name store names or not, so I will not mention where, but a well known and trusted store. The web page said usually ships in 1 to 2 days but after he placed the order (and his card was charged) they called him to let him know that nobody in the country has any in stock due to a work strike in Japan or something. They estimated early June for them to be available.

He decided to look around and called another store and they said they had 34 in stock. He purchased one there, but hasn't received any tracking numbers yet and the first store insists that he is being lied to by the second store that indeed there are none in stock anywhere.

Has anyone hear about this stock issue?

I would guess another store could very well still have inventory from early on.
I would guess the ones who are sold out are the more popular stores.
Sad to hear the strike is holding up product.