Virtual Queues - No Hybrid Cloud? Retailers Losing Money?

If you’re facing a virtual queue with your online retailer of choice, does this mean they don’t use a hybrid cloud (i.e. they cannot scale-out front-end web retail serving compute quick enough to cope with extra demand)?
Or simply that they do use hybrid cloud, but its architecture is limited in some way preventing rapid scale-out?

Probably the latter.

I only have one example to go by (I’m not a big shopper) and this was www.boots.com. And it made me think they must be losing money (they’re probably still doing very very well though), as the product I was thinking of buying, I can also get at https://www.amazon.co.uk/, so Amazon get the business.

See the Boots example below “Hello, you’re in a virtual queue ... wait ... more than an hour”.
With Amazon (the public cloud kings still, with Microsoft and Google nipping at their heels) you go straight in.

Just an observation.

Image: Boots - you’re in a virtual queue for an hour (for more than an hour)

Image: Amazon straight in

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