Disable permanent shopping basket?

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...

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.