Method of and apparatus for the ordering from remote locations, such as a home or office or the like, of merchandise and/or services from a central location such as a store or warehouse and the like

Abstract From the Canadian patent

The present invention relates to an improved interactive store or other central location-remote telephone home office or other, user telephone terminal system and technique for enabling users to order items from the central location with the aid of machine-readable apparatus at the user terminal preferably a bar code, reader (W), operated by the user in scanning pre-prepared bar codes (BC) descriptive of the items to be ordered and the signals of, which are directly converted to DTMF tones transmitted over the telephone to the central location where they are recognized and stored, with voice confirmation describing the ordered item automatically sent back over the telephone to the user.