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.
They probably justified it as some sort of product validation? Its like a huge thing with the community at indie hackers to use a landing page to validate market demand.
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).