It seems you can only store the value displayed in the text box on the autocomplete, which often is of no use.
For example, I want a user to be able to search for a contact, the user should only ever see the contact's name, but I need to store the Unique ID for that contact.
Is there any reason it can't just store the complete selected object? This seems like it would be a very simple fix that would make it ft for purpose.