Offbeat: Scalping Big City Restaurant Reservations

Becoming a middleman and adding no value to a product is definitely capitalism in America

 

I don't think that "it's capitalism" is a counter to something being an awful thing to do. I also don't think it was a "gap"... as in it wasn't something we needed that he fixed. It's more like a loophole he exploited which serves no real purpose other than making him money. It adds zero value to the consumer.

 

Bastion of liberalism.

 

Why is it awful?

If someone wants to pay for the luxury of getting into a place last minute?

 

If you're one of the folks who wants a reservation and are willing to pay for it but aren't quick enough to get it, you might disagree. Regardless, yes, capitalism has its flaws, but I won't hate on a college student who is thinking outside the box.

 

You need to get out more

 

It is a slippery slope, my friend, if you want to justify whether something is a good idea because someone with money might pay for it.

 

and those who would like a reservation but can't afford the luxury of paying someone else to make it for us? this schmuck is just monopolizing supply and charging a service fee because he can.

 

Olive Garden?

 

I wouldn't pay someone for a reservation but not going to hate on this guy for using some intellect.

I generally go for hole in the wall asian places, none of them take reservations anyway, the food is outstanding and goes for 1/10th the price of some of these places (I am guessing).

 

Let them eat CAKE Olive Garden.

 

Unlimited breadsticks for all!

 

Nah, he’s scum.

No difference from ticket brokers who used to pay hobos to wait in line to scoop up all the tickets (or who also now use bots to hijack the process). The use of bots actually bothers me more. High volume bots is not too far away from a DDoS attack. It could actually be construed as such since it puts “normal” end user customers at a disadvantage trying to use the same system.

In some high brow academic sense maybe it’s creating a more “price efficient” market, but I would still call such a person a scumbag because of the front end tactics.

 

I would label him scum if he was doing this to a life or death product (pharma bro).
If someone has the cash or is stupid enough to pay an extra 500 for a luxury product, that's on them.

 

The issue I have is that his bots likely crowd out actual end users. It breaks the system. Once the system is broken and this guy starts taking bids, is this a true “price discovery”? Not so sure.

Some might say he’s providing a service. Maybe that’s true on the back end (a person willing to pay up for a “sold out” restaurant rather than log on at the appropriate time). The problem is on the front end he’s creating a disservice, and as I said the use of bots could be construed as a criminal DDos attack.

I’m not totally convinced this sort of thing should even be legal *if* it can be shown his bots distort or disrupt traffic to the reservation websites. But even if it’s a legal grey zone, he’s still a scumbag just as others in the cottage industry of “scalping” tend to be scumbags. That’s fundamentally all this is. Pharma Bro was a totally different level.

 

This is happening for golf tee time reservations in LA also at all the public courses. There is far more interest in the sport than there are non-private courses in SoCal.

I golfed there about 20 years ago with friends at a public course and our round took 8.5 hours. 5-somes and 6-somes were standard.