What if online vendors could prioritize low stock items to preferred people?

[MikeTheNewbie]

The most weird thing happened to me this morning.
I went to the BRS site and looked for Aquaforest Life Source. It had been out of stock for a while but last night I heard about it in the ReefDudes livestream.
As usual, the page said it was out of stock so I thought about adding it to my favorites on my phone so I can check for it more frequently.
To my surprise, my phone showed it was in stock. I went back to my computer to buy it and it showed it out of stock. Weird.

It turns out that the product shows out of stock when I'm logged in to BRS with my account and it becomes available when I open the site in incognito mode or when I log out.
In the end I was able to bypass the issue by adding to my cart while logged out in incognito mode and then once the item was in my cart, I logged in, it stayed there and I bought it.
I'm sure they must have a software issue but the whole situation made me think:

• What if online vendors could prioritize scarce products like salt mixes or dosing pumps to specific users, like the ones that have more purchases or the ones that pay a subscription? That would stink.

I hope the hobby continues to have diversity and options and this economy of scarcity we are currently facing ends soon so companies can go back to competing and increasing sales based on product performance and quality, not just product availability.

 

[Arego]

With 20yrs of search marketing and online commerce experience, they wouldn't bother code that in. If it could happen they would charge a subscription fee to get that access, They could care less who buys it and how large your order is. They throw us points to help us feel better