On 30-Oct-2003, kenR wrote:

Actually, I'm fairly certain that what they did was to set up their
system to remove things from inventory when the purchase was completed,
and not when the customer placed it in their cart.

If they did that and the customer never completes the transaction, then
the item stays out of inventory even though not sold. They'd have to
design a timeout mechanism to put it back. Too long and they miss
inventory - too short and the customer finds his order suddenly
disappeared when he went to the bathroom. The web is stateless
and that makes foolproof transaction processing difficult at best.

Mike