It's definitely something new. No question about it.
What do you mean? If it's a regular-stock item in the store (not clearance obviously) it should still show how many are in stock. I just looked up a Ridgid nailer (not a clearance one):
before the 50-cent nails binge, i was able to look up
clearance items online, and check the in-store availability of
clearance items, but not their price, in
any store i wanted to look at. this was regardless of whether there was zero inventory or not. i used to get a store list that showed in store availability in my region. sure, the web site only showed the web site's price, not the local store clearance sale pricing, but it still showed accurate in-store inventory data on any SKU that i knew were on clearance.
that doesn't work any more.
now when the things are on clearance in my local store, the web site says online only instead of showing in-store inventory. now the website will also not offer the ship to store option, or the free ship over $50 option, and won't allow me to check store inventory on an SKU that is on clearance. i'm not imagining this -- this is a definite change that they implemented to put an end to some of the searching for price reduced inventory and getting a ton of it with free shipping.
if you've missed this change in the site's behavior, then you haven't been using the site enough to notice what features have been disabled, and when they became disabled. ordering was turned off in the wee hours on The Night of the Long Nails, and they issued a "technical difficulties" message when they turned it off. some poster here noted this with a post saying, "we broke it." Ordering didn't get resumed until the following morning, and that morning the web site's behavior was changed so that these features i've mentioned became disabled.
i'm not complaining, just stating the facts. maybe i'm one of the people who contributed to it. i had $1000 in 50c nails in my shopping cart at the time that the web site became "broken" and it broke before i was able to complete checkout. so i lost out on that deal. no biggie, i probably would have had that order cancelled like others did. but as a result of losing my cart i paid VERY close attention to the way that the web site worked. they definitely disabled some if it's features as a result of the nail thing. definitely not a coincidence. oh well. life goes on and we adapt to the new paradigm...
