Bots Gobble Up Restaurant Reservations in the Bay Area

This blog posts offers absolutely nothing new relative to what was in Diogo&#x27;s original post [0] and accompanying previous discussion [1]. In fact it offers less since it doesn&#x27;t include the original scripts Diogo used.<p>I (and I&#x27;m sure many others) would love it if there were some way for moderators to aggregate all upvotes for related articles that don&#x27;t offer substantial new information or commentary on the original article instead.<p>It&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>[0] <a href="https://diogomonica.com/bot-wars-the-arms-race-of-restaurant-reservations-in-sf/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;diogomonica.com&#x2F;bot-wars-the-arms-race-of-restaurant...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6101161</a>

For context on this, Gothamist recently posted this article about a company that &quot;pre-books&quot; reservations at hard to get restaurants. Customers pay $1,000&#x2F;year for the privilege and then $45&#x2F;$90 on top for especially hard to get reservations.<p>Article: <a href="http://gothamist.com/2013/08/02/wealthy_foodies_can_buy_hard-to-get.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gothamist.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;02&#x2F;wealthy_foodies_can_buy_hard...</a><p>The Gothamist article came from this Food Republic article: <a href="http://www.foodrepublic.com/2013/07/30/man-gaming-new-york-city-restaurant-reservation-sc" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.foodrepublic.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;30&#x2F;man-gaming-new-york-c...</a>.<p>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.

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

Previous discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101161" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6101161</a>

I&#x27;m sorry, but this line bugs me:<p>&gt;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.<p>How is calling the restaurant a <i>hassle</i>? Especially when the solution is to <i>use your phone</i> to look the restaurant up online?<p>Maybe it&#x27;s the cranky old man spirit in me, but I call restaurants every time -- I hadn&#x27;t even heard of these sites. I didn&#x27;t know that this was a need people felt needed fulfilling.

It doesn&#x27;t mention if the automated reservation takers are then trying to &#x27;sell&#x27; them in other forums. I&#x27;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.

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

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

I resent the idea that someone who genuinely wants a dinner reservation but has to write a bot in order to get one isn&#x27;t an &quot;honest&quot; diner. How is that any worse than refreshing all day waiting for a spot to open up?

Restaurants are such a fickle business anyway. Surprised they don&#x27;t just auction off reservations to the highest bidder and cut out the middleman, while they&#x27;re still trendy.

Could the restaurants require an account to be created, limit the number of reservations one account can make, and check that people aren&#x27;t multi-accounting from the same ip address?<p>The bots could get around this with proxies, but it would seem to be a pain to set up that many proxies.<p>Maybe there&#x27;s a space in the market for someone to solve this problem for the restaurants.

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.<p>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.

If a restaurant can be fully booked sixty days in advance,they aren&#x27;t goign to care who&#x27;s making the reservations, as long as butts are in seats and bills get paid at the end of the meal.

SO happy I don&#x27;t have to live out there &amp; deal with that crap.

Since when has &#x27;calling a restaurant&#x27; become a hassle?

A truly global business. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140894" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6140894</a>

Yeah. Look for the arbitrageurs and destroy them.