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What are strategies to deal with seemingly common scenario of a limited inventory and an order form.

If there is one item left, and two people attempt to purchase at the same time. How do you deal with whoever submits payment last?

blockhead
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1 Answers1

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When a user adds a limited-supply item to their shopping cart, put a hold on the item for a small window of time - say, 15 minutes. It's theirs if they pay within the window, otherwise the hold is removed and the item is returned to the pool. (For the duration of the hold, the item considered "not available" to other users.)

AFAIK, it's pretty standard technique - I've seen Gilt do this, for instance.

Matt Ball
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  • This is what I thought of, but I was afraid I should be concerned about losing a potential customer during those 15 minutes. – blockhead Jul 12 '11 at 20:09
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    @blockhead: you've only got one to sell, and two interested buyers -- at least one person is going to leave unhappy. [Ticketmaster](http://www.ticketmaster.com/h/orderonline.html?tm_link=help_nav_3_online) does the same, but with multiple smaller windows: two minutes here, three minutes there. 15 minutes sounds long to me, once a decision has been made to buy, entering data should take much less time than that for all but the most disabled. Make sure they can order through _some_ mechanism.. – sarnold Jul 13 '11 at 01:57