
Bots Gobble Up Restaurant Reservations in the Bay Area - tsax
http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/07/29/bots-gobble-up-restaurant-reservations/
======
malandrew
This blog posts offers absolutely nothing new relative to what was in Diogo's
original post [0] and accompanying previous discussion [1]. In fact it offers
less since it doesn't include the original scripts Diogo used.

I (and I'm sure many others) would love it if there were some way for
moderators to aggregate all upvotes for related articles that don't offer
substantial new information or commentary on the original article instead.

It's pretty clear that a lot of journalists troll HN and related sites, find
human interest stories that strike a nerve with the HN community, then write a
blog post rehashing the same content without really adding anything new. It's
a simple recipe for getting karma and page views that cheapens the experience
here on HN. This type of journalistic pablum should not be rewarded with karma
or attention.

[0] [https://diogomonica.com/bot-wars-the-arms-race-of-
restaurant...](https://diogomonica.com/bot-wars-the-arms-race-of-restaurant-
reservations-in-sf/)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161)

------
spiek
For context on this, Gothamist recently posted this article about a company
that "pre-books" reservations at hard to get restaurants. Customers pay
$1,000/year for the privilege and then $45/$90 on top for especially hard to
get reservations.

Article:
[http://gothamist.com/2013/08/02/wealthy_foodies_can_buy_hard...](http://gothamist.com/2013/08/02/wealthy_foodies_can_buy_hard-
to-get.php)

The Gothamist article came from this Food Republic article:
[http://www.foodrepublic.com/2013/07/30/man-gaming-new-
york-c...](http://www.foodrepublic.com/2013/07/30/man-gaming-new-york-city-
restaurant-reservation-sc).

In other words, companies are starting to farm restaurant reservations to sell
them, similar to the way that the market for event tickets has been corrupted.

~~~
jusben1369
Thank you for this! I read the entire article waiting for "Ok, so _why_ do
bots book all these restaurants. Be nice if the author had pointed out the
economics behind it.

------
sadris
Require a CC, charge a $3 cancellation fee. Problem solved.

~~~
LarrySDonald
Temp CCs. There may or may not be money on it when the fee comes in..

~~~
sadris
Sorry, meant to say: charge $3 for a reservation, not a $3 cancellation fee.
Deduct that cost from your bill for the meal.

------
akiselev
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161)

~~~
_delirium
Original source, from the previous discussion: [https://diogomonica.com/bot-
wars-the-arms-race-of-restaurant...](https://diogomonica.com/bot-wars-the-
arms-race-of-restaurant-reservations-in-sf/)

The siliconbeat.com article here just seems to be a reblog/summary.

------
toki5
I'm sorry, but this line bugs me:

>Using OpenTable, Urbanspoon or SeatMe , diners could see available time slots
and make a reservation online or from their smartphone without the hassle of
calling the restaurant, and know that their table would be secure.

How is calling the restaurant a _hassle_? Especially when the solution is to
_use your phone_ to look the restaurant up online?

Maybe it's the cranky old man spirit in me, but I call restaurants every time
-- I hadn't even heard of these sites. I didn't know that this was a need
people felt needed fulfilling.

~~~
nohuck13
I couldn't disagree more with this. Having to involve two actual people, who
have to drop whatever else they're doing and complete a trivial transaction,
which can probably only be done during business hours, is a problem just
begging for a technological solution.

Anyway, they're just entering your details into a system not unlike OpenTable.
Why serialize this process into a conversation over a phone line?

~~~
cbhl
I remember reading an article where an article lamented the inflexibility and
poor UX of a system like OpenTable -- in the real world, people arrive early
and/or late and so servers will dynamically shuffle table allocations to
handle these changes. Apparently, the servers ended up just drawing on the
monitor using a dry erase marker rather than trying to change the bookings in
the computer.

------
ChuckMcM
It doesn't mention if the automated reservation takers are then trying to
'sell' them in other forums. I'm wondering if there is a motive there or not.
There is a similar problem with getting camp site reservations even though
there are charges for cancellation.

~~~
nohuck13
That was my reaction too. You see exactly the same thing with concert tickets
and scalpers. It's supply and demand problem that venues want to use rationing
because it increases cachet, but abritrageurs have an incentive to step in and
resell for the "market" price.

I wonder if we'll see more Ticketmaster-style countermeasures on reservation
sites soon.

Or more restaurants varying their prices for high- and low-demand times like
Alinea in Chicago
([https://www.alinearestaurant.com/website/welcome/](https://www.alinearestaurant.com/website/welcome/))

~~~
ChuckMcM
Given the low margins on restaurants they could clearly benefit economically
by having a 'cost' reserved table, which is to say for $x you can sit down
right now vs wait in the regular queue. Of course it would be interesting to
plot tips from people who paid extra for rapid seating vs those who waited.

------
theatrus2
And this is why credit cards are increasingly required to book a reservation
online.

------
daurnimator
Do they not have captchas? or are the bots beating them?

------
krstck
I resent the idea that someone who genuinely wants a dinner reservation but
has to write a bot in order to get one isn't an "honest" diner. How is that
any worse than refreshing all day waiting for a spot to open up?

~~~
glesica
I think it's because only a limited number of people have the ability to do
so. There are probably a number of other methods of "cheating" in similar
situations that would also be viewed poorly for the same reason. A few
examples off the top of my head: hiring a handicapped person to let you skip
lines at Disney, hiring a homeless person to hold your spot in line, bribing
an employee, having your assistant spend all morning mashing F5 while you go
about your day, and certainly many others.

The ones I named would be seen by many people as unfair because they are
options that are only available to people with a great deal of money. Other
strategies (like calling in a favor) are only open to those with influence and
special personal connections. In this case, we have a strategy that is only
open to individuals with highly technical skills.

Note that I'm not saying it _is_ unfair to use any of these strategies. I
think reasonable people could disagree on many of them and they are sensitive
to circumstances.

In some sense, though, this can be seen as a market distortion. For you or I,
writing a bot to do this might be pretty simple. Since we don't have to "pay"
very much for the reservations, we would be likely to over-consume them, that
is, to make more reservations than we intend to keep. We might even double-
book ourselves so we have options (e.g. this morning I felt like steak, now I
feel like seafood).

This is obviously bad for the restaurants, but it is also bad for other
customers who might have wanted the reservations more than we did, but were
unable to build a bot to get them because, years and years ago, they chose to
study things other than computer science.

~~~
krstck
Totally agree that using this to book reservations that you don't intend to
keep is unfair and harmful. I see this, though, less like hiring handicapped
person to jump the line and more like having your friend save you a spot.

I agree with the people that say charge a convenience fee. That would
discourage the unfair behavior and still let people who actually intend to
keep their reservation secure a spot.

------
sgustard
Restaurants are such a fickle business anyway. Surprised they don't just
auction off reservations to the highest bidder and cut out the middleman,
while they're still trendy.

~~~
jlgreco
I have heard that some restaurants have started auctioning off a handful of
their tables. Usually part of the proceeds go to charity I think?

------
philbarr
Could the restaurants require an account to be created, limit the number of
reservations one account can make, and check that people aren't multi-
accounting from the same ip address?

The bots could get around this with proxies, but it would seem to be a pain to
set up that many proxies.

Maybe there's a space in the market for someone to solve this problem for the
restaurants.

~~~
yogo
You can't restrict based on IP address since there are scenarios where a group
of machines will present the same IP address. It's also very hard to verify
with other methods. They would have to take an approach similar to hotels or
car rentals. Even then I don't think the problem is easily solved because if
the demand is so great for these restaurants and the supply limited, charging
or authorizing a payment ahead of time might not be much of a deterrent if the
profits to be made are higher.

------
tomjen3
This would seem relatively simple to fix: post the reservations at random
times, cache the result page in mem-cache based on ip for 15 minutes.

Yes some may be able to use a few extra ips, but to win they would need access
to thousands of them, which is far more difficult.

------
vampirechicken
If a restaurant can be fully booked sixty days in advance,they aren't goign to
care who's making the reservations, as long as butts are in seats and bills
get paid at the end of the meal.

------
bjpcjp
SO happy I don't have to live out there & deal with that crap.

------
Jazonk
Since when has 'calling a restaurant' become a hassle?

------
dictum
A truly global business.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140894)

------
squozzer
Yeah. Look for the arbitrageurs and destroy them.

