Being someone who just started PFS a few weeks ago, I'd like to shed some light on why this situation needs a bit of disambiguation. There are two specific passages in the 4.0 guide to organized play that make it less than obvious when you are trying to figure this out for yourself.
The first one is on page 19 under Other Items.
"Beyond the gear noted above, your character is restricted to purchasing additional items from his accumulated Chronicle sheets, or by capitalizing on his prestige within his faction. Weapons, armor, equipment, magic items and so on that are outside of these lists are not available for purchase at any time.
The problem here is that the word prestige is used rather than fame, if you were to then go and look at the table for prestige you find that there is an option to get a free purchase of up to 150gp for 1 pp, or 750gp for 2 pp. This could lead you to believe that that is all this previous entry is referring to.
The second problem passage is on page 21 under Benefits of Fame.
"A character's Fame score determines the maximum gp value of any item she can purchase from her faction, as detailed in Table 5-2 below. The character must still actually spend the gold to receive the desired item."
The problem here is that it isn't defined what "buying from her faction" actually means, and nowhere else in the guide is this mentioned at all. If there was a paragraph or section somewhere that said something like "The only place to purchase items not attained on a chronicle sheet or on the 'buy anytime' list is to purchase them from your faction" then everything would be clear. This seems like a minor thing to those of you who have been playing for awhile, but to a new player or GM who have been running standard pathfinder or 3.5 games this is a whole new concept.
You might say that the only sensible conclusion to come to is that table 5-3 refers to items not covered by chronicle sheets or in the buy anytime list, and I would agree with you, but having a hazy area in the rules that invites people to draw their own conclusions inevitably leads to confusion like this.
