[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

It would be unfeasible for online stores to track what items people put in their online carts in real time and deduct that from available inventory, as this would be incredibly easy for someone to abuse the system and screw over honest buyers. If such a cart-tracking system were in place, one random anonymous person could go to an online store, add EVERYTHING to his cart, leave it there and then simply never actually buy it, while meanwhile genuine customers could be prevented from actually buying it because those cart items were already deducted from available inventory.

Fab.com does exactly the process you are describing. The way they get around "hoarders" is by limiting quantities and placing a time limit on how long your cart is valid.

I akin this to ticketmaster. If anyone has ever purchased tickets to a concert through them, once you have chosen the tickets you want, ticketmaster holds those tickets for 5 minutes or so until you've paid.

Now, I don't think AM is quite at the traffic volume of ticketmaster. I find their system perfectly acceptable. I just wanted to point out that there are plenty of sites that do monitor inventory based on placement in cart versus final purchase.

-Brando