Time-expiring Carts - has this been done?

I have a client who sells limited time items that are sold out quickly. She doesn't like the fact that someone can put an item in their cart, and by the time they check out someone has also put that item in their cart and checked out - so the first person finds the items is sold out by the time they check out. I told her the problem with doing it any other way (first in cart wins) , was that someone could put an item into their cart and then never buy it, and then that 1 item would be effectively kidnapped. Her idea was to have the carts clear on a timer - which I've seen on other sites. In short, you'd put the item in your cart, but it would tell you you had 60 minutes (or whatever) to check out, or the item would be released to the wild.

Before we tackle what I imagine is a pretty heavy duty hack in-house, I was wondering if anyone has seen something like this out there available? I couldn't find anything in the forum.

You would have to make a lot of customization to the code to remove a product from stock when added to the cart and then replace that product into stock after a period of time has passed and the customer is no longer active ...

Stock is currently addressed on the final completion of an order, but you could customize the code to work in another way ...

Note: if you take the product out of stock when the product is added to the cart, be aware of adjustments to the normal stock update so as not to remove the quantity from the product twice ...

This would be an interesting Add On, let us know how you do on this ... :smile: