product delivery server

I am creating a vendor to allow some folks to resell some items of mine. I want them to own the vendor. Thus, as the items are copy no transfer, there is no easy way to do this as I can't just put the item in the vendor's inventory and have the vendor dispense it as I won't be the owner of the vendor.

It appears the way this is normally handled is to create a server box that I own that responds to a purchase by one of the vendors owned by someone else. I guess that request needs to happen via email? However, I'm a bit concerned about what would happen if my server box goes away and needs to be re-rezzed. The email address the vendor would use to email my server is based on the object ID of my server. Won't that change if I take the object back to inventory and re-rez it? (like if I had to move it etc.)?

Also, how reliable have people found object to object email? Do you do a 2 way acknowledgement? Vendor asks server to send item - server sends item - server sends back an acknowledgement to the vendor - if vendor doesn't get acknowledgement in a timely fashion refunds money?

Anyone else do something like this? And yes, I do know there are products out there that do this but I'm building a unique solution that is beyond what those products offer (I have researched them but can't tell from their descriptions if email is being used as the link)

Have the delivery server store its key on a website and the vendors query the key on purchase via llHTTPRequest().

Query on purchase simply because then they will get the current active key of the server.

You can use the same method to tell vendors to update themselves with new product info by reading it from a specified notecard...

If it is feasible for you I'd recommend doing the communication itself with HTTP as well. The vendor can POST a purchase order, and the server can GET it (by polling, possibly with the aid of XML-RPC in a non-critical fashion if you want to get complicated and reduce the frequency of polling), send the delivery, and POST an update saying the purchase order has been filled. Then you don't even have to worry about the server object's key; you could even have multiple server objects across multiple sims if you're careful about how you do it.

Failing that, the simple HTTP storage/retrieval of the server's key for later e-mails should work fine as mentioned above.