Disable permanent shopping basket?

[volcane]

I'm setting up a shop for a client, and they've asked me if it's possible to disable the permanent cart feature?

As i understand it, someone could add an item to their basket, never return or checkout, and that item would be 'locked' and unavailable for anyone else to purchase.

have I understood that right?

What we'd like to do is not retain the basket info when someone leaves the store...

[schoolboy]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you say the item is "locked".

As far as I know, if you are using Zencart's stock management features, an item is deducted from the stock number only after a successful checkout.

Let's say you have only 1 of a certain item in stock.

Customer A comes to your store and puts that item in their cart, but does not check out. He then leaves the site after logging out.

Customer B then comes to your store and also wants the item. I believe it should STILL be available to customer B, who should then still be able to add it to the cart and successfully check out.

When customer A returns, the item will no longer be in his cart as it is now out of stock.

Why don't you set up 2 TEST customers, and a TEST product that has only 1 in stock. Configure your zenstore to manage stock, and then try out what I say above.


... in any event, if you are selling unique (one-off) products, then you need to tell your customers that a policy of "first come first served" is applicable, as only one of each item is available.

It's no different from a bricks-&-mortar shop.