Too bad. Build a bigger store or publish this information so we don't need 10,000 personal shoppers. Was this not the whole point of having a website? Who distorted that simple idea into the garbage websites we have now?
You can block IP's at the host level but there's pretty easy ways around that with proxy networks.
Who misled you with that statement?
If store businesses at least partially relies on obscurity of information that can be solved through automated means (e.g. storefronts tend to push visitors towards products they don't want, and buyer agents are fighting that and looking for something buyers instructed them) just playing this cat and mouse game of blocking agents, finding workarounds, and repeating the cycle is only creating perverse technological contraptions that neither party is really interested in - but both are circumstantially forced to invest into.
Corporate America. Where clean code goes to die.