I might even go so far as to suggest that the OP was aware of this and is simply trying to start a flame war about the practice of building fake checkout pages.

I think The Lean Startup was the first to popularize this idea, maybe? It’s nothing new, although I’ve always found it a bit weird/distasteful. I’m surprised he’s okay with doing it on his established brand where there is actually something to lose (vs spinning up a totally new site with no existing brand capital).

I can't imagine who thought it was a good idea to have their product offer something to customers ... and then pull a "lol nope not a real thing!" on customers who wanted the thing.

Seems like a really weird way to test stuff. But the Internet is an ocean, so I guess it doesn't matter if you anger some fish.

Can't someone just sue them so they actually have to deliver the content they were pretending to sell? I mean, this looks very shady if done by them.