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Method and apparatus for customer direct on-line reservation of rental vehicles including deep-linking

  • US 8,234,134 B2
  • Filed: 06/13/2003
  • Issued: 07/31/2012
  • Est. Priority Date: 06/14/2002
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method comprising:

  • using a processor, (1) storing an account that is associated with a customer, the account having a rate for a rental vehicle corresponding to the rental vehicle reservation transaction, (2) receiving data corresponding to a deep-link Uniform Resource Locator (“

    URL”

    ) from a customer computer, the deep-link URL comprising a domain name and a portion following the domain name, the portion following the domain name comprising encoded data representative of (i) the account and (ii) a parameter for a rental vehicle reservation, (3) processing the deep-link URL encoded data to determine (i) the account corresponding thereto and (ii) the rental vehicle reservation parameter corresponding thereto, (4) retrieving the rate from the determined account, (5) providing the customer computer with deep-link access to a website page from a rental vehicle reservation booking website in response to the receiving and processing steps without requiring the customer computer to access at least a home page of the website such that the website page is configured to solicit input from the customer regarding a rental vehicle reservation transaction, the rental vehicle reservation transaction having (i) an applicable rate that is pre-set in accordance with the retrieved rate, and (ii) an applicable parameter that is pre-set to match the rental vehicle reservation parameter determined from the encoded data, and (6) creating a rental vehicle reservation in accordance with the pre-set rate, the pre-set parameter, and other data provided by the customer computer for the rental vehicle reservation transaction.

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