Yeah, these aren’t particularly high-end places. Adding a ~$200 reservation is going to double the cost of a dinner of two easily. This scam is making the restaurants unaffordable.
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Then it seems like the restaurants in question should have a vested interest in fighting back against this scam/trend. It only hurts them, in the end.
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Yeah, it’s a little baffling that the eat the rich sentiment is being applied. Rich people don’t hassle with online reservations, for goodness sake, and the place with the $29 entrée is not exactly where Jamie Dimon is straining to get in.
I’m not sure if it comes from a belief that anything more expensive than a burrito is for the “rich” and therefore worthy of scorn or (as the poster above hinted at) a rather narrow worldview making it just too difficult to wrap one’s head around why anyone would care. Or, I suppose, a combination of the two that results in being personally offended that anyone would have different experiences than they might.
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Is it, though?
Just how often do people who are working poor make dinner reservations, do you think?
Do tell. Broad overgeneralized assumptions are fun!
Depends upon the perspective, methinks.
Having constant access to healthy food options and clean drinking water piped into my home makes me “rich” compared to more than many people in the world.
Hell, having more than pair of shoes to my name does also.
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It’s also worth noting that most mid-tier sit down places are going up in cost in recent years. What used to be a $30 dollar meal is now like $50 or $60 with tip (for like 2 people for two meals and maybe an app)- and that’s not reservation type places. Most places I know that do reservations are in the $100 to $200 or more a plate range…
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I’ve only ever had to make reservations at higher end restaurants, for special occasions; and I called the respective establishments directly when I did so.
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Yep, pretty much. Now, I have called ahead a couple of times, in case the place I wanted to go was gonna be busy, but that’s not really a reservation, and it sure as shit doesn’t cost extra.
But yeah, this yet another kind of enshittifcation meant to enrich some middle men at the expense of both the restaurants and the consumer…
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Just how often do people who are working poor make dinner reservations, do you think?
I don’t understand the relevance of this rhetoric.
Are you saying that if a person isn’t the working poor, their experiences don’t matter? Does anyone’s experience matter, if there’s someone else out there who’s poorer and doesn’t have that experience?
If someone malicious lays spikes in the road and your tires are flattened while you’re trying to get to work, is it a-ok? After all, some people don’t even have cars. So why should anyone care what happened to you? (Oh, that’s too elitist, because you don’t have a car? Okay, maybe it happens to a bus you’re on. But who cares: some people can’t even afford bus fare!)
There is no inherent nobility in poverty nor shame in wealth (or vice versa), and no act of unprovoked assholishness is automatically absolved because you think the target isn’t suffering enough. Shitty deeds are shitty, full stop, no matter whom they affect.
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That’s okay.
Nope, and I appreciate it that you didn’t make any arbitrary assumptions.
Have a great day, now.
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Co-sign. At this point I’m not at all sure what is even being argued about, so that’s probably a sign of diminishing returns. And the only thing in the world less interesting than an argument about what is being argued is an argument about whether anything is being argued.
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I wasn’t “arguing” with you, or Ginnie.
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Can’t believe it took a whole 13 years for this idea to catch on…
[s7 ep16]
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Gonna disagree here. As others have already noted this is just another example of enshittification. The app adds nothing of value, and where it really hurts is the restaurants, which already tend to have pretty thin operating margins.
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We generally don’t go out to eat (unless a food truck counts.) There are only 2-3 times a year when we really want to go to a nice restaurant, such as birthdays. If I tried to make a reservation at our traditional/favorite place and was told none of the times were open because they had all been spoken for, that would be a sad, especially if it was because of some techbro trying to game the system for money.
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Never lived in a hockey town I guess. All Scalpers accomplish is 1) seriously make life hell for front of house staff dealing with this shit, 2) ensure the value of the visit goes to them not the restaurant, and 3) likely cause downward pressure on tips thanks to having to pay more just to be there in the first place.
This, of course, is the sort of institutionalized grift Ticketmaster has added to every event venu, and cheering them on is awfully close to cheering for the Ticketmaster business model, to the chagrin of artists and fans everywhere.
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Well, it’s disruptive all right, but gets zero points for being disruptive technology, specifically.
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I can’t wait until “disruption” is no longer a viable business model.
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Exactly!
Here in the UK we have the very same problem with driving test slots, would you believe? They get released in blocks, bots snap them up instantly, and the bot operators sell them on to learner drivers at massively marked up prices.
Zero value added, just lots of profit!
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But that’s the Tory’s for you. Bots run by their mates who somehow got PPE contracts.
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What will be interesting to see is whether restaurants (especially when there’s also the issue of people making multiple reservations and then no-showing all but the one they wanted most to deal with) start trying to fight this by tying reservations to payment information.
That’s obviously going to be a hard sell for the cheap seats; but those typically have less sought-after reservations; while at the price tier where you probably aren’t going to be paying cash anyway I don’t see people loving the idea, just on contact; but I can see people recognizing that they’ll be handing over their payment card information at one end of the night or the other; and that a reservation that’s free if you show up is probably a better deal than a reservation you cannot get without paying a scalper.
I’m sure that there are more and less effective and more and less tactful and unobtrusive variants, likely room for experimentation; but in a case where people are making a reservation to make a purchase(commonly one that includes alcohol, another place where ID can come into things anyway) it seems like there are some levers to work with to significantly increase the cost of trying to make a reservation you intend for resale or as a backup if you can’t get the one you really want.
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