Patent ID: 7529689

Claim:
A transaction management system for managing the purchase of an item and/or service by a buyer from a seller, the system comprising; a data store for storing seller data comprising, for each of a plurality of sellers, a seller identifier, seller offer data indicating at least one service or item of commerce offered for sale, the data store further storing, for each of the sellers, seller defined seller contactability data indicating at least one date and/or time by when the seller should be contactable which date and/or time defines a contactability window; a program store storing processor implementable instructions; and a processor coupled to the data store and to the program store for implementing the stored instructions; wherein the stored instructions comprise instructions for controlling the processor to: implement a buyer interface to output seller offer data for a plurality of sellers, and to receive a purchase request from the buyer accepting a said offer, the purchase request comprising request data indicating a service or item of commerce requested by the buyer and a delivery date and/or time for a requested service or item as well as a purchase request deadline indicating the date and/or time by when a response to the purchase request is required; determine a system confirmation deadline using the purchase request deadline; identify a seller offering the requested service or item, which seller's contactability window indicates a date and/or time by when the seller should be contactable, which date and/or time is prior to the system confirmation deadline; implement a seller interface to output the request data to the identified seller for requesting purchase of the service or item; monitor communication of the identified seller with the system during the seller's contactability window to ascertain compliance data for determining whether the identified seller is willing or able to comply with the buyer purchase request; determine whether the identified seller has accepted the requested purchase by the system confirmation deadline using said compliance data; and output compensation data by selecting one or more sellers of an alternative service or item to replace the service or item requested by the buyer if the identified seller has not accepted the requested purchase by the system confirmation deadline, and the one or more sellers of the alternative service or item being contactable before the delivery date and/or time for the requested service or item thereby to compensate the buyer.