Discontinued items

[little-linguist]

Currently, discontinued items disappear from view once sold out. We are finding a lot of customers contact us asking where such-and-such a product has gone when they're sure they saw it before or they can see it in the catalogue but can't find it on the website.
I'm wondering if it would be better to have the option to still have the discontinued item displayed but with a message next to the "availibility" bit to say that it's discontinued, instead of in stock, low stock and out of stock etc. Then that way, customers will still find what they're looking for but will know it's not available without having to contact us to ask.

[Rich]

Actually, discontinued items are not removed from view when sold out. They are simply prevented from being ordered. You have to physically deactivate them to remove them from view.

[little-linguist]

Oops - my mistake. I thought they just disappeared. Thanks for letting me know.