Patent ID: 8160929

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for an item availability information service to identify merchants local to a consumer that are currently able to provide an indicated item to the consumer, the method comprising: receiving a request from a consumer for information about one or more merchants that are geographically local to the consumer and currently available to provide an indicated item from current local inventory of the merchant; automatically determining at least one geographically local merchant that is currently available to provide the indicated item to the consumer from the current local inventory of the merchant, the automatic determining being performed by one or more programmed computing systems of the item availability information service and including: automatically identifying one or more merchants geographically local to the consumer that at least potentially provide the indicated item by: determining a location of the consumer and a type of the indicated item; and determining merchants near the determined location of the consumer that are each likely to provide items of the determined type based at least in part on one or more of a name of the merchant, a category of merchants to which the merchant belongs, and a group to which the merchant belongs; and automatically contacting a human representative of each of at least one of the identified merchants to query if the merchant is currently available to provide the indicated item from the current local inventory of the merchant and to query for a current price of the indicated item from the merchant; and providing information to the consumer to indicate one or more of the determined at least one geographically local merchants and to indicate the current price for the indicated item for each of the indicated one or more merchants.