Typical conversion rates hover around 3-4%. That is if 100 items were viewed, only 3-4 times they are bought. So, to decrease load on your sourcing engine, it makes sense to cache the "next 2 hours" calculation results and recalculate exactly during checkout.

The delivery was on the west coast, so it's not like they could ship further for a better timezone. Furthermore I think the times were more spread out than I said - something like 3 hours later, the new shipping cutoff was 6 hours away. They also hiked the prices mid-session, and clearing state restored the previous ones.

When an organization grows large, the distinction between deliberate malice and beneficial incompetence becomes less meaningful. Inferring an organizations broader culture can be informative, but the net incentives are the same.

It definitely did not feel like a data consistency issue. And the "dynamic pricing" is obviously malicious, but it's the sort of machine-vs-human maliciousness we've been groomed to accept as "the free market".

I don't have a particular grudge, and buy from them if they're the lowest bidder. I just don't understand what appears to be single-minded affinity for them.