Soeren or Gregdev, can we get any help with this? Can you confirm that the problem is on Joomla's end?
By the way to those who didn't understand my posts earlier. If you assign templates in the admin, every time you (or your client) adds a new page to the site, you'll have to also go to the template manager and manually assign the page to the right template. Not a big problem for a small site that you maintain, but its a drawback if you have clients adding pages.
While my "hack" won't automate the process, it should allow you to have multiple templates now if you need them. Since my previous posts were maybe a bit fuzzy... and I'm about to do this thing again so it's a refresher for me... here goes again. It's not hard, but it will take some basic Joomla template/HTML/PHP knowhow.
STEP 1: In the admin, publish a module to an unused module position like user9. Assign it to whatever pages you want to theme differently. This module doesn't have to actually appear on the front end unless you want it to. One module allows for two "templates". If you need a 3rd look, publish a 2nd module, etc. Important: Make sure you publish each module to a position not occupied by any other module.
STEP 2: Use php If statements in your template to query for the module(s). If the module is published, you are on the page or one of the pages that you assigned the module to.
Something like this could go in the <head>:
<php
$mytpl=""
if ($this->countModules('user9')) {$mytpl='template1';} //change user9 to the module position you assigned the module
?>
This checks to see if your module is published. If it is, that means we are on a page(s) that you published it to. Next, wherever you want to vary the template, throughout your html you'd do something like:
<?php if ($mytpl=="template1") { ?>
<!-- your html/modules for template1 -->
<?php } else {?>
<!-- your html/modules for the alternate look -->
<?php } }?>
This code is set up for two different templates but you can modify it pretty easily to accommodate more. I've tested it in a couple of ways and it worked for me, but it may or may not distinguish the store properly. You might try assigning a module to all pages NOT the store and allowing the store to be the default.
Using this method, you would be doing your template switching using modules which is still manual. If there were only a variable within the Joomla framework to tell what category/component/frontpage we are on (and can be counted on), the process could be automated so no hack like this would be needed. Using the Joomla View DOES work when you're not using VM, which seems a bit strange (to me) that it's a Joomla problem...