MisterT - 7:33 pm on May 17, 2010 (gmt 0)

Killing the page makes sense if your customer service team keeps taking calls for an item which is no longer available

Calls about any product are an opportunity to up-sell. If a customer calls or emails about an out of stock or discontinued product, suggest a similar product the same way you would on the website.

If the majority of your products are discontinued, that could lead to problems though...so I can see the need to kill pages sometimes.