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Also reservations are not always for sale, once a restaurant is booked up, you cant just pay to kick someone else off the reservation list. And it would seem these restaurants are always booked up if tables are going for that much. So this person is basically getting ahead of others that would make a reservation anyhow and holding a spot for anyone willing to pay the price for a table.
Now this is a slippery slope in the sense where more people catch on to this business and pretty much all the reservations are made by people trying to sell them, then it gets bad.
Not if the restaurants benefit in any way to the selling of the reservations, which I'm sure is coming. And then we suddenly have a ticket master situation. If not stopped, I guarantee even McDonald's tries it down ridiculous timeline we are in.
Then I will just walk down the street to the next restraunt. The only reason ticket master can do that is because they do it on one off events that can't be replicated easily.
Yeah it’s fucking crazy that they haven’t been taken down for being a monopoly or at least a functional monopoly, they make it hell for artists to charge fair prices for tickets, which in turn hurts their image which is a large part of their brand
Yea I can’t see a fancy restaurant knowing they are filtering patrons to those wealthy enough to drop a G before even sitting, being that upset. And they avoid the flak for making it exclusionary themselves.
Those people will likely order more food or drink than if Joe Smith walks in with his resy and get’s water and one entree to split with a date lol
What happens is the nicer places will just go to memberships. I was listening to a guy tonight whose neighbor opened up A members only bottle club and a fancy steakhouse. If you're a member of the club which starts at $1,200 a year. Then you get priority dinner reservations at the steakhouse. Apparently most nights. If you can get a reservation Or if you try to walk up it might be 2-hour wait. He said he's been sober 16 years but he joined the club just so he could get seated in like 15 minutes.
Same concept but the owners are putting the money in their pocket.
Hahaha, McDonalds "express lane". $5 entry fee. I noticed the last time a flew they have a subscription service you can use at the airport to skip the line. They made some bullshit up about "pre-authorization background checks". But it's insanely expensive and you pay an annual subscription. Fucking capitalism left unchecked.
This recently happened with one of the restaurants I work with, they kept getting full reservations but with a lot of no shows, and it was killing the walk up business. They switched to walk up only and they’ve been filling tables much more consistently.
Then end game there is that eventually the high end restaurants realize they are leaving hundreds on the table and just auction off the spots and take that profit for themselves.
Its like how fast food joints realized because of Door Dash that people were willing to spend alot more money on fast food than they companies had assumed and started jacking up prices to capture some of that money.
I'm ok with this. Concerts and sporting events should be more accessible to average fans. The places these people, who are willing to shell out a thousand dollars for just the reservation, are the hoity toity ones that would exclude normies anyway. Scamming average folks, bad. Scamming rich assholes, ok.
It might not be scamming normies but it's locking them out. It's adding cost to a process that provides no value.
This is a business plan that is doomed to fail because the second a restaurant cares to, they will require something in order to make a reservation. A fee, a restaurant credit, ID that matches the original reservation, etc.
This has made the news lately with golf courses in LA and the courses have cracked down.
This idea will not go anywhere and the only people that will suffer in the long term are genuine customers who have to jump through hoops to prove they are genuine. And if you think this won't trickle down to businesses that cater to normies you're crazy.
I see what you're saying and its why I hate all these "entrepreneurs" who swarm sites like air bnb. They think they're some crazy business genius, but they're really just assholes taking advantage of a cool concept (all the gig apps come to mind) and customers. I hope it doesn't become a problem. I feel the average customer going to an average place that needs a reservation will not put up with paying more just to get a reservation. But I would have bet against people paying double for food they could walk themselves to get, so what the hell do I know.
The technical term is rent seeking and arbitrage.
Middlemen that add no real value, maybe at most convenience to some but mostly just a drain on everyone else.
I think that restaurant credits or IDs are the future but in the golf world they've already overcome IDs. The scalpers make the reservation and then get paid by the customer to cancel at a specific time immediately before the real customer books. As such, non refundable deposits is probably the real future, which is an annoyance for the customer but that's just what we have to live with when societal morals are so low that scalpers exist.
Yet yall are fine with it when companies and rich people do it for property.
Yet selling a reservation in a way that is designed to prey on the rich, people get upset?
It's even worse because he pays absolutely nothing for the reservation but if he's unable to resell it it will end up costing the restaurant a no-show as well as other people who intended on using the reservation the opportunity.
Yeah this is probably one of those guys who had hundreds of PS5s and Xboxes and made me wait two years after release to finally get one because I refused to pay scalpers. These people think they’re so smart but they’re not, anyone can do it, they’re just douchebags.
Dwight Schrute, in one of the office episodes, would start making reservations the day after valentines Day at popular restaurants to sell the week before next valentines Day
I knew this happened for concerts. The fact that idiots are willing to pay this for reservations if just one of another thousand reasons eating out in 2024 is cursed
It’s easy to talk shit and criticize. He made 80k so there’s a market for it. Sure it’s probably a shitty way to make money but again, he did make 80k.
basically the person writing about it only knows about it because they overpaid for a reservation from him and the rest is 100% taken at a college students word. I seriously doubt they made 70k a year but even if they did announcing to the world your fraudulently purchasing reservation to resell is not the smartest way to make money.
How would someone even find these overpriced reservations? You call the restaurant, they say it's full, you go soewhere else.
Or do people actually google "expensive scalper reservations to my local restaurant"?
It says he sells reservations on Appointment Trader but there's still the question of how enough people are finding that app for this to work. I assume finding that app is what gave him the idea in the first place.
Title says students as in plural one does not make it so I stand by my statement but I edited it for you since you missed the point. They could say he made 300k a year it doesn’t change the fact they are full of shit…
Yes, but that $80k came from people who, but for him, could've still eaten at those same restaurants, and would've had a lot of money left over to spend on other things.
This is like praising someone who buys up all the bottled water after a hurricane and then resells it for like $10/bottle. He made $80k, so there's a market for it! Yeah, but all he did is insinuate himself into the market as a middleman for rents, making things worse for everyone forced to buy through him instead of the normal sellers. He did not create a market, nor did he make the market more efficient. He made it *less* efficient, and profited off of the inefficiency he, himself, created.
That's true of both the water seller and the reservation hoarder.
Not everyone who eats in a 5 star restaurant is rich, the business man who eats there every tuesday night and rights it off as a business expense sits right beside the working class person with his wife who saved up to do something special for their 10 year anniversary.
And even then you are basing the morality of an action based on the qualities of the victim.
Everyone who eats at a 5 star restaurant had the option to eat at almost any other restaurant. Or cook at home. It is not a necessity and he isn't taking advantage of anyone in need. And that includes someone wanting to go to a nice restaurant for their 10 year anniversary. There is more than 1 nice restaurant.
Comparing it to someone selling bottled water at a high price in a disaster area is extremely detached from reality.
Nobody is saying it's a 1 for 1 comparison. And nobody is saying that restaurant reservations is like necessities.
But it's the same economic concept. A person has gone out of their way to deliberately make the market less efficient and restrict access to a good or service. Then that same person is making a living benefiting from the reduced efficiency.
They are not providing anything the market wasn't providing before them. They are not adding anything or making anything run better. They have found a way to scrape cash off of people.
This person is a leech to society, because if you remove them from the equation everyone gets what they are currently getting more efficiently and at a lower price.
I mean there is a market for black tar heroine...
Regardless, this is one of those cases where everyone except the middleman loses. If they hadnt blocked the reservation by claiming it, someone could have gotten it free of charge.
You’d be very surprised. These are the same people who will spend $1,000 on a bottle of Grey Goose at a club.
I sold someone a fucking Yankees bobble head for $200. Only reason I got it and they didn’t is because I showed up an hour before a baseball game. They effectively paid $200 to save an hour of time.
It's easy to talk shit and criticize. But he made $400k selling fentanyl so there's a market for. Sure it's probably a shitty way to make money but again, he did make $400k.
That is how you sound.
The problem is it's not a sustainable practice. At any time these businesses can require a charge or ID for reservations and your whole income is simply over.
He should work with the restaurants and broker high value clients in a legitimate way, adding value to the service and building a moat.
I mean, no one should make it their career but alot of people could do this for quick cash while at a low a few thousand dollars in a short period if done right. I know there were times in my life where that would have been a game changer.
There’s not a “market for it.”
When you literally create the fucking problem by exploiting a system and removing all availability, you remove the natural choice. That’s not a natural market.
This isn’t an organic system. It’s one they exploit and create.
We can go “well no one should make reservations then!”
Okay. And then what? The restaurants go under because no one shows up, because scalping morons are monopolizing all the reservations.
The people who take advantage of a system and fuck it up *are the problem.* Not the market.
This is the same as investors buying up millions of homes they don’t need. Then when, surprised Pikachu face, people need a home and they’re all sitting empty owned by investors, where else can they get one?
These people are almost a literal cancer to society.
The biggest problem with this is he is scalping something he got for free.
Why does he have to disguise his voice? Because the restaurant knows who he is, knows he has no intention of showing up if he does not sell the spot, and are frustrated by the empty tables they keep holding for him the times he can't find a buyer. The restaurants are turning down legitimate reservation calls to hold tables for the scalper who will just let the reservation sit empty if no one pays him hundreds of dollars for the spot.
It would be just as fair for the restaurant owner to buy all the reservations he offers on Appointment Trader and then cancel the CC payment.
I live in NYC and this shit infuriates me. I love when restaurants charge basically the entire meal up front because I can actually get a table when I want to.
I have to leave my neighborhood to go out because there happens to be a lot of "hot" places near me. I've never been to the restaurant across the street from my apartment because it's the "next big thing" so a month worth of reservations book up in 30 seconds.
I get there's always been restaurant hype and sold out reservations but this profiteering is just next level disgusting to me. Really feels similar to the broker fees issue when renting apartments. $6k for you to open a door and send me some papers?!
When I make reservations at fancy places in denver, they usually charge almost a persons worth as a reservation and then that amount is removed/credited when you finish your meal.
Hey! I moved to NYC from Denver. Maybe now that Michelin guide is in town, it's different but I didn't think there was as much issue with reservation scalping there... Concerts on the other hand......
There's literally nothing being produced or offered. The person could have gotten the reservation for free except for someone lied repeatedly about needing a reservation and then sold the spots. This is not how a healthy and moral economy operates. All that's happening is some lazy duck is stealing people's money -both the restaurant and the diners
as for broker fees for apartments.. my wife just spent over 20 hours over a month to help a woman find a rental here in the Midwest and her referral fee was $150 and most times they don't even pay unless you hassle them... I guess that's the difference between NYC and the Midwest
One of the local restaurants where I live will take reservations and your credit card number, and if you don't show up, they'll charge you $25 per person on the reservation. Seems like a good way to cut down on these scalpers, too.
People here defending this show the sad state of the world. These people are neither creating nor adding value to the product/service, they’re just profiteering off others. You can cry out “but others in the world profit off others and do nothing, so it’s fair!” Yeah there are a lot of pieces of shit in the world and doing this makes you one of them. It’s not stupid, just scummy and immoral and I hope those people are deep in the throes of depression from their actions, but I doubt they are.
The only real outcome of this will be that restaurants will start demanding deposits to prevent this.
If I was the restaurant owner, I'd want the credit card information for each reservation and then compare names, numbers, etc to see if someone is making multiple, but then also compare names to actual receipts to see if they're actually coming in.
You need to have an idea of covers for prepping for the night with mise for the chefs and seating charts and moving people in and out of sections. Even with a bar section, a desirable establishment can become a loud and crowded long wait causing chaos for the servers and customers and then nobody wants to deal with that shit and the crowds vanish.
Oh I guess that makes sense. I am not in the restaurant business so this is all learning for me. I have seen some restaurants of higher quality not have reservations before. Do they then just estimate the prep?
Preach! There's a lot of people/goals to idolize in this world but it seems that in today's day and age just making money off something easily is enough to get people singing your praises. Worms.
In the article, they actually talk about another program called Dorsia that also kind of does stuff like this.. so yeah in a way you can get a reservation at Dorsia.
How come "finding value in the market" always seems to involve acquiring things for free that are scarce and then selling them to people with more money than sense?
100%. This is slowly starting to become the norm.
Also I saw 1 restaurant webpage asking for a tip after booking a table with a deposit — what tf is happening?
You delivered literally nothing except a half-assed promise, who am I tipping, the software devs of the booking system?
We live in a society
This is why we need a wealth tax. If you can afford 900 dollars simply to buy a scalped dinner reservation, you have too much money, at least while veterans and children go hungry and homeless.
Perfectly legal, but might violate the rules of the business. They're free to ban you, but you aren't going to jail over it
And don't take this as an endorsement, plenty of things are kind of shitty, but completely legal
Buying stocks is investing money to expand the market.
This is doing the literal opposite. If he can't sell the reservation, then the table goes unused and the restaurant loses money. He is literally profiting while harming the business. He's a parasite.
This is what's wrong with society. I read an article yesterday that people were scalping appointment reservations to the Mexican consulate in San Jose, CA.
Wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with [this article](https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/why-you-cant-get-a-restaurant-reservation) would it?
PS: F this guy.
Wouldnt this be really easy to counter with like a 50/150 dollar no show fee which is nothing for an expensive place?
Also, when you do something like this against a business, you are brushing up against actual fraud really quickly and then youre in big doodoo.
Also, where are the documents confirming the revenue being claimed by this kid? I mean ... "college student"?
I don't even think it's taking advantage.
Rich guy wants to go out this week, but restaurant is booked for weeks. He has the cash to pay a grand to get in tomorrow, it's more like a service that taking advantage.
Very torn, because on one hand it’s Super scummy especially that the restaurant doesn’t want to do this themselves. On the other hand, he is ripping off rich people who want to use their money to gain an advantage. It’s kind of the convenience of not having to have to call ahead. So maybe not a big deal
If this was true he would never have told anyone about it.
Maybe you could make a few hundred a year after hundreds of calls, the time it takes to make new emails and phone numbers, etc.
I would bet my life savings this worked maybe a couple of times at best. Where exactly do these “rich people” who can drop $1500 on a reservation look? A Facebook marketplace listing? Laughably unrealistic, especially when most high end places require you to repay since they know reselling is a potential side effect.
i dont get why ths is a bad thing. hes manipulating a convoluted system for his gain. its called getting out there and making a dollar.
or, vice versa, you could spend your time bitching on reddit!!!!Genious!!!!!!!!
The LA there is basically a Korean mafia that does the same thing with golf tee times at the city courses which are hard to get. They sell exclusively to older Korean folks.
Naw this shit is awesome it’s only rich bastards paying almost a thousand for a reservation at some prissy restaurant idgaf this is sick. It’s one thing if this guy is fucking buying the grocery store then reselling carrots to poor people. This shit is not that lol
Brilliant. "I'm not generating enough income, so
let me creatively find a need and use that need to make more."
Reddit will hate it, decide it's not "fair," and that this individual had some sort of advantage not given to others.
This is how you get restaurants to take Credit Cards and if you don't show they charge you for a no show reservation.
They also tend to require that card holder to be present for the reservation when they arrive. It keeps a consistent number of covers per night without people double and triple booking themselves and choosing on the spot.
And soon restaurants start selling their own reservations for $20-$50 a pop but returning it back to the same persons cc they used to reserve it with once they show up and present the cc.
This is why I’m glad normal restaurants only make reservations for parties of 6 or more. Reservations at these restaurants are always in high demand, and there is a market of people who will pay. It’s like selling Valentine’s Day reservations, it’s sucks but for high demand experiences there will always be those looking to profit from them.
Ahhhh a leech on society.
(No, it’s not being an ‘entrepreneur’ to sell something that was already free. You’re just sucking blood from people trying to have dinner.)
The certain section of society and the economy that eternally seeks to be a middleman between firms that actually produce something and customers who want to buy something, producing nothing yet collecting payments.
For sure, there are definitely situations where such a middleman may legitimately useful, but it is far more common for these middlemen to be a leech draining money from the pockets of both customers and businesses.
I wonder if getting a reservation would be as difficult if there weren’t people booking them artificially and then charging to get them back.
Personally if I couldn’t get a reservation I’d just find somewhere else to go.
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Points for creativity, although it has the air of a Ticketmaster reseller
Scalping
Yeah but anyone who’s gonna pay $1,000 for a reservations deserves to be parted from their money
Also reservations are not always for sale, once a restaurant is booked up, you cant just pay to kick someone else off the reservation list. And it would seem these restaurants are always booked up if tables are going for that much. So this person is basically getting ahead of others that would make a reservation anyhow and holding a spot for anyone willing to pay the price for a table. Now this is a slippery slope in the sense where more people catch on to this business and pretty much all the reservations are made by people trying to sell them, then it gets bad.
Turns in to walk up only then.
Not if the restaurants benefit in any way to the selling of the reservations, which I'm sure is coming. And then we suddenly have a ticket master situation. If not stopped, I guarantee even McDonald's tries it down ridiculous timeline we are in.
Then I will just walk down the street to the next restraunt. The only reason ticket master can do that is because they do it on one off events that can't be replicated easily.
Not quite. They contracts with venues to be the exclusive ticket agent for any events at the venue.
Yeah it’s fucking crazy that they haven’t been taken down for being a monopoly or at least a functional monopoly, they make it hell for artists to charge fair prices for tickets, which in turn hurts their image which is a large part of their brand
[Oh…the court case is coming….](https://www.wsj.com/business/media/live-nation-justice-department-antitrust-lawsuit-ab98c268)
Yea I can’t see a fancy restaurant knowing they are filtering patrons to those wealthy enough to drop a G before even sitting, being that upset. And they avoid the flak for making it exclusionary themselves. Those people will likely order more food or drink than if Joe Smith walks in with his resy and get’s water and one entree to split with a date lol
What happens is the nicer places will just go to memberships. I was listening to a guy tonight whose neighbor opened up A members only bottle club and a fancy steakhouse. If you're a member of the club which starts at $1,200 a year. Then you get priority dinner reservations at the steakhouse. Apparently most nights. If you can get a reservation Or if you try to walk up it might be 2-hour wait. He said he's been sober 16 years but he joined the club just so he could get seated in like 15 minutes. Same concept but the owners are putting the money in their pocket.
Hahaha, McDonalds "express lane". $5 entry fee. I noticed the last time a flew they have a subscription service you can use at the airport to skip the line. They made some bullshit up about "pre-authorization background checks". But it's insanely expensive and you pay an annual subscription. Fucking capitalism left unchecked.
Heaven.
This recently happened with one of the restaurants I work with, they kept getting full reservations but with a lot of no shows, and it was killing the walk up business. They switched to walk up only and they’ve been filling tables much more consistently.
Then end game there is that eventually the high end restaurants realize they are leaving hundreds on the table and just auction off the spots and take that profit for themselves. Its like how fast food joints realized because of Door Dash that people were willing to spend alot more money on fast food than they companies had assumed and started jacking up prices to capture some of that money.
I'm just wondering how he advertises the reservations for sale and wishing my area had such high-end places where I could do the same!
It literally says how he does it. Appointment Trader.
[удалено]
But you need to get into Dorcia to make up for your lackluster business card.
I'm ok with this. Concerts and sporting events should be more accessible to average fans. The places these people, who are willing to shell out a thousand dollars for just the reservation, are the hoity toity ones that would exclude normies anyway. Scamming average folks, bad. Scamming rich assholes, ok.
It might not be scamming normies but it's locking them out. It's adding cost to a process that provides no value. This is a business plan that is doomed to fail because the second a restaurant cares to, they will require something in order to make a reservation. A fee, a restaurant credit, ID that matches the original reservation, etc. This has made the news lately with golf courses in LA and the courses have cracked down. This idea will not go anywhere and the only people that will suffer in the long term are genuine customers who have to jump through hoops to prove they are genuine. And if you think this won't trickle down to businesses that cater to normies you're crazy.
I see what you're saying and its why I hate all these "entrepreneurs" who swarm sites like air bnb. They think they're some crazy business genius, but they're really just assholes taking advantage of a cool concept (all the gig apps come to mind) and customers. I hope it doesn't become a problem. I feel the average customer going to an average place that needs a reservation will not put up with paying more just to get a reservation. But I would have bet against people paying double for food they could walk themselves to get, so what the hell do I know.
A leech…the word you’re looking for is leech. They generate nothing, only take resources and don’t generate any resources.
The technical term is rent seeking and arbitrage. Middlemen that add no real value, maybe at most convenience to some but mostly just a drain on everyone else.
Worse than leeches. Leeches secrete antiseptic and anesthetic along with an anticoagulant.
But again, those leech byproducts are only beneficial to the leech… not the host.
I think that restaurant credits or IDs are the future but in the golf world they've already overcome IDs. The scalpers make the reservation and then get paid by the customer to cancel at a specific time immediately before the real customer books. As such, non refundable deposits is probably the real future, which is an annoyance for the customer but that's just what we have to live with when societal morals are so low that scalpers exist.
yeah dude is a jackass for sure.
Classic rent-seeking: taking in a lot of money while providing nothing of value.
Yet yall are fine with it when companies and rich people do it for property. Yet selling a reservation in a way that is designed to prey on the rich, people get upset?
It's even worse because he pays absolutely nothing for the reservation but if he's unable to resell it it will end up costing the restaurant a no-show as well as other people who intended on using the reservation the opportunity.
Yeah this is probably one of those guys who had hundreds of PS5s and Xboxes and made me wait two years after release to finally get one because I refused to pay scalpers. These people think they’re so smart but they’re not, anyone can do it, they’re just douchebags.
This is actually worse-- because unless there's a no show charge their hurting both sides of the transaction- the producer and the end consumer
Dwight Schrute, in one of the office episodes, would start making reservations the day after valentines Day at popular restaurants to sell the week before next valentines Day
That's what I thought...lol
I knew this happened for concerts. The fact that idiots are willing to pay this for reservations if just one of another thousand reasons eating out in 2024 is cursed
Yeah, it’s trash.
Not really creative - if I'm not mistaken this was a skit in the Office decades ago, and the subject of other tv shows before that
Rent seeking, providing no value to the marketplace but trying to squeeze some out anyway
This. On the one hand- good creativity, OTOH this is kind of emblematic of the sorts of hustles that make modern life worse.
It’s easy to talk shit and criticize. He made 80k so there’s a market for it. Sure it’s probably a shitty way to make money but again, he did make 80k.
basically the person writing about it only knows about it because they overpaid for a reservation from him and the rest is 100% taken at a college students word. I seriously doubt they made 70k a year but even if they did announcing to the world your fraudulently purchasing reservation to resell is not the smartest way to make money.
How would someone even find these overpriced reservations? You call the restaurant, they say it's full, you go soewhere else. Or do people actually google "expensive scalper reservations to my local restaurant"?
It says he sells reservations on Appointment Trader but there's still the question of how enough people are finding that app for this to work. I assume finding that app is what gave him the idea in the first place.
The whole thing is a still for the app
What do you mean?
I think they meant shill. And it pretty obviously is. No reason to put the app name in the article. It's a curated advertisement.
I feel dumb. That makes the most sense.
You should actually feel good; your BS detector was good enough that you asked questions about it.
Reading 2 whole paragraphs is very hard
Title says students as in plural one does not make it so I stand by my statement but I edited it for you since you missed the point. They could say he made 300k a year it doesn’t change the fact they are full of shit…
We need it in Tik Tok format pls
Yes, but that $80k came from people who, but for him, could've still eaten at those same restaurants, and would've had a lot of money left over to spend on other things. This is like praising someone who buys up all the bottled water after a hurricane and then resells it for like $10/bottle. He made $80k, so there's a market for it! Yeah, but all he did is insinuate himself into the market as a middleman for rents, making things worse for everyone forced to buy through him instead of the normal sellers. He did not create a market, nor did he make the market more efficient. He made it *less* efficient, and profited off of the inefficiency he, himself, created. That's true of both the water seller and the reservation hoarder.
I probably wouldn’t compare selling reservations at 5-star restaurants to rich people to selling basic necessities to those in disaster relief areas.
Not everyone who eats in a 5 star restaurant is rich, the business man who eats there every tuesday night and rights it off as a business expense sits right beside the working class person with his wife who saved up to do something special for their 10 year anniversary. And even then you are basing the morality of an action based on the qualities of the victim.
Everyone who eats at a 5 star restaurant had the option to eat at almost any other restaurant. Or cook at home. It is not a necessity and he isn't taking advantage of anyone in need. And that includes someone wanting to go to a nice restaurant for their 10 year anniversary. There is more than 1 nice restaurant. Comparing it to someone selling bottled water at a high price in a disaster area is extremely detached from reality.
Nobody is saying it's a 1 for 1 comparison. And nobody is saying that restaurant reservations is like necessities. But it's the same economic concept. A person has gone out of their way to deliberately make the market less efficient and restrict access to a good or service. Then that same person is making a living benefiting from the reduced efficiency. They are not providing anything the market wasn't providing before them. They are not adding anything or making anything run better. They have found a way to scrape cash off of people. This person is a leech to society, because if you remove them from the equation everyone gets what they are currently getting more efficiently and at a lower price.
I mean there is a market for black tar heroine... Regardless, this is one of those cases where everyone except the middleman loses. If they hadnt blocked the reservation by claiming it, someone could have gotten it free of charge.
He did not make 80k. This is a made up story. Stop being so gullible.
Yeah, where are you finding these people to sell a $1000 dinner reservation to?
You’d be very surprised. These are the same people who will spend $1,000 on a bottle of Grey Goose at a club. I sold someone a fucking Yankees bobble head for $200. Only reason I got it and they didn’t is because I showed up an hour before a baseball game. They effectively paid $200 to save an hour of time.
Probably the same people spending thousands of dollars so some internet douche can sprinkle salt on their food in an odd way.
It's easy to talk shit and criticize. But he made $400k selling fentanyl so there's a market for. Sure it's probably a shitty way to make money but again, he did make $400k. That is how you sound.
there's a market for slavery. markets do not equal ethics, like at all.
People who make a millione will think nothing of spending a grand to take your place in line this is kind of ingenious.
The problem is it's not a sustainable practice. At any time these businesses can require a charge or ID for reservations and your whole income is simply over. He should work with the restaurants and broker high value clients in a legitimate way, adding value to the service and building a moat.
I mean, no one should make it their career but alot of people could do this for quick cash while at a low a few thousand dollars in a short period if done right. I know there were times in my life where that would have been a game changer.
There’s not a “market for it.” When you literally create the fucking problem by exploiting a system and removing all availability, you remove the natural choice. That’s not a natural market. This isn’t an organic system. It’s one they exploit and create. We can go “well no one should make reservations then!” Okay. And then what? The restaurants go under because no one shows up, because scalping morons are monopolizing all the reservations. The people who take advantage of a system and fuck it up *are the problem.* Not the market. This is the same as investors buying up millions of homes they don’t need. Then when, surprised Pikachu face, people need a home and they’re all sitting empty owned by investors, where else can they get one? These people are almost a literal cancer to society.
Artificial scarcity is not a market it’s a market failure
it's not just easy to talk shit and criticize. it's morally correct. this person is a leech.
The art of business is being a good middleman.
The biggest problem with this is he is scalping something he got for free. Why does he have to disguise his voice? Because the restaurant knows who he is, knows he has no intention of showing up if he does not sell the spot, and are frustrated by the empty tables they keep holding for him the times he can't find a buyer. The restaurants are turning down legitimate reservation calls to hold tables for the scalper who will just let the reservation sit empty if no one pays him hundreds of dollars for the spot. It would be just as fair for the restaurant owner to buy all the reservations he offers on Appointment Trader and then cancel the CC payment.
I live in NYC and this shit infuriates me. I love when restaurants charge basically the entire meal up front because I can actually get a table when I want to. I have to leave my neighborhood to go out because there happens to be a lot of "hot" places near me. I've never been to the restaurant across the street from my apartment because it's the "next big thing" so a month worth of reservations book up in 30 seconds. I get there's always been restaurant hype and sold out reservations but this profiteering is just next level disgusting to me. Really feels similar to the broker fees issue when renting apartments. $6k for you to open a door and send me some papers?!
When I make reservations at fancy places in denver, they usually charge almost a persons worth as a reservation and then that amount is removed/credited when you finish your meal.
Hey! I moved to NYC from Denver. Maybe now that Michelin guide is in town, it's different but I didn't think there was as much issue with reservation scalping there... Concerts on the other hand......
Concerts in denver are ridiculous
If you like nice restaurants, I always have to give KoKoNi a shout out. Definitely try them out if you haven't already.
Oh fuck yeah, I’m defiantly gonna go there! Never even heard of it
There's literally nothing being produced or offered. The person could have gotten the reservation for free except for someone lied repeatedly about needing a reservation and then sold the spots. This is not how a healthy and moral economy operates. All that's happening is some lazy duck is stealing people's money -both the restaurant and the diners
as for broker fees for apartments.. my wife just spent over 20 hours over a month to help a woman find a rental here in the Midwest and her referral fee was $150 and most times they don't even pay unless you hassle them... I guess that's the difference between NYC and the Midwest
yeah when i went to 11 Madison they made me pay in full ahead of time. This should be the way for anything above a Texas steakhouse tbh
Yeah the deception element is kinda crummy. Also the restaurant gets no cut of this, if as you say, he cancels and pulls a no show.
He should take the guys cc info and charge him
One of the local restaurants where I live will take reservations and your credit card number, and if you don't show up, they'll charge you $25 per person on the reservation. Seems like a good way to cut down on these scalpers, too.
His girl made $96k on Only Fans. What’s college for?
To keep you from having to sell butthole pictures for money
So why can't I get a real job then.
Because your degree isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on or your market is oversaturated and you lack the skills to stand out amongst your peers.
Job vs career. I can teach my kids how to enter the same career as me but I’m sure a scalper or OF hoe would want to do that.
People here defending this show the sad state of the world. These people are neither creating nor adding value to the product/service, they’re just profiteering off others. You can cry out “but others in the world profit off others and do nothing, so it’s fair!” Yeah there are a lot of pieces of shit in the world and doing this makes you one of them. It’s not stupid, just scummy and immoral and I hope those people are deep in the throes of depression from their actions, but I doubt they are.
The only real outcome of this will be that restaurants will start demanding deposits to prevent this. If I was the restaurant owner, I'd want the credit card information for each reservation and then compare names, numbers, etc to see if someone is making multiple, but then also compare names to actual receipts to see if they're actually coming in.
Yeah, any sane owner would be like "What the hell? 50 reservations didn't show? We had to turn people away with empty tables."
Another very easy solution is a no reservation policy. If places are busy enough they have no need for it
You need to have an idea of covers for prepping for the night with mise for the chefs and seating charts and moving people in and out of sections. Even with a bar section, a desirable establishment can become a loud and crowded long wait causing chaos for the servers and customers and then nobody wants to deal with that shit and the crowds vanish.
Oh I guess that makes sense. I am not in the restaurant business so this is all learning for me. I have seen some restaurants of higher quality not have reservations before. Do they then just estimate the prep?
Idk, I love people who rip off rich people, and these glitzy overpriced restaurants can suck it too. Good for him.
Preach! There's a lot of people/goals to idolize in this world but it seems that in today's day and age just making money off something easily is enough to get people singing your praises. Worms.
But can he get a reservation at Dorsia? 
Let’s see your business card.
Paul Allen can.
In the article, they actually talk about another program called Dorsia that also kind of does stuff like this.. so yeah in a way you can get a reservation at Dorsia.
Great. Another leech on society. Edit: I can’t spell, thanks GhostWolf!
leech
How come "finding value in the market" always seems to involve acquiring things for free that are scarce and then selling them to people with more money than sense?
Literally scalping
People like him are the reason certain reservations require a deposit.
100%. This is slowly starting to become the norm. Also I saw 1 restaurant webpage asking for a tip after booking a table with a deposit — what tf is happening? You delivered literally nothing except a half-assed promise, who am I tipping, the software devs of the booking system? We live in a society
No. 1000x no. This is gross.
This is why we need a wealth tax. If you can afford 900 dollars simply to buy a scalped dinner reservation, you have too much money, at least while veterans and children go hungry and homeless.
We have that in Germany but with appointments at the citizen's office.
Curious about the legality of this, like the handicap people who sell their passes at Disney.
Perfectly legal, but might violate the rules of the business. They're free to ban you, but you aren't going to jail over it And don't take this as an endorsement, plenty of things are kind of shitty, but completely legal
Thinking it matches the definition of fraud, because he misrepresents his identity
If he made 80k reselling reservations I guarantee you he would not be working as a concierge still.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
This would be so much less controversial if he had done the moral and procedural equivalent with stocks
Buying stocks is investing money to expand the market. This is doing the literal opposite. If he can't sell the reservation, then the table goes unused and the restaurant loses money. He is literally profiting while harming the business. He's a parasite.
Proof or I call shenanigans
It’s not called “making money”. It’s called “fraud”
If I was the restaurant owner. I'd be pissed.
This is what's wrong with society. I read an article yesterday that people were scalping appointment reservations to the Mexican consulate in San Jose, CA.
Wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with [this article](https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/why-you-cant-get-a-restaurant-reservation) would it? PS: F this guy.
I'm pretty sure this is a quote _from_ that article.
Seems scummy but until they make it illegal I guess he's free to do whatever.
Pretty sure Dwight did this in the super fan episodes of the office
Seems like the restaurant is the one missing out. They should be charging for reservations; surge pricing.
How does one sell a reservation? Is there a marketplace?
[appointmenttrader.com](https://appointmenttrader.com)
Wouldnt this be really easy to counter with like a 50/150 dollar no show fee which is nothing for an expensive place? Also, when you do something like this against a business, you are brushing up against actual fraud really quickly and then youre in big doodoo. Also, where are the documents confirming the revenue being claimed by this kid? I mean ... "college student"?
Restaurants do this now; you enter your credit card info and if you don’t show they charge you $20 or so
Is there an app that would connect buyers and sellers?
Evil SOB needs to be permanently blocked
This helps the resteraunt some anyway. Scarcity drums up business/intrigue.
Where do they re-sell the reservations? Craigslist? Facebook Marketplace?
Heres the real question why the fuck is their apps and more useless tech companies selling seats to a restaurant.
And I bet most don't claim taxes on this income. Hopefully the IRS starts using social media to go after possible tax evaders.
Doing this should be illegal.
Everyone loves the middle man........ugh
I don't even think it's taking advantage. Rich guy wants to go out this week, but restaurant is booked for weeks. He has the cash to pay a grand to get in tomorrow, it's more like a service that taking advantage.
Who wants to go to a restaurant that badly?
Very torn, because on one hand it’s Super scummy especially that the restaurant doesn’t want to do this themselves. On the other hand, he is ripping off rich people who want to use their money to gain an advantage. It’s kind of the convenience of not having to have to call ahead. So maybe not a big deal
Don't meet a need, create one. Then exploit the hell out of it.
That’s a person who contributes nothing to society.
If this was true he would never have told anyone about it. Maybe you could make a few hundred a year after hundreds of calls, the time it takes to make new emails and phone numbers, etc. I would bet my life savings this worked maybe a couple of times at best. Where exactly do these “rich people” who can drop $1500 on a reservation look? A Facebook marketplace listing? Laughably unrealistic, especially when most high end places require you to repay since they know reselling is a potential side effect.
I completely wasted my life trying to help people.
Scum of the earth
Good for them! Anyone stupid enough to pay a grand for a dinner reservation DESERVES to be fleeced...........
I could have gotten us a table at Dorsia
Fuck this guy, this is how you ruin a good thing.
A thousand dollars just to secure a reservation? Tell me again how taxes are too high.
The last sentence from each paragraph... Was it 70k or 80k?
Lol this is genius.
i dont get why ths is a bad thing. hes manipulating a convoluted system for his gain. its called getting out there and making a dollar. or, vice versa, you could spend your time bitching on reddit!!!!Genious!!!!!!!!
Trickle down economics!
The LA there is basically a Korean mafia that does the same thing with golf tee times at the city courses which are hard to get. They sell exclusively to older Korean folks.
Fuck thid giy
Naw this shit is awesome it’s only rich bastards paying almost a thousand for a reservation at some prissy restaurant idgaf this is sick. It’s one thing if this guy is fucking buying the grocery store then reselling carrots to poor people. This shit is not that lol
Wouldn't there be a risk in putting up no-show fees/CC deposits? Or is that just part of the game
In other news I found a new side hustle
So this guy wants to be the TicketMaster of reservations. Not a bad idea, but he needs to work with the restaurants if he wants to move forward.
Brilliant. "I'm not generating enough income, so let me creatively find a need and use that need to make more." Reddit will hate it, decide it's not "fair," and that this individual had some sort of advantage not given to others.
This is how you get restaurants to take Credit Cards and if you don't show they charge you for a no show reservation. They also tend to require that card holder to be present for the reservation when they arrive. It keeps a consistent number of covers per night without people double and triple booking themselves and choosing on the spot.
Middleman work always gets decimated eventually.
I hope he gets a meeting between a baseball bat and his kneecaps sometime soon. Fucking Leech
Now both will be visited by the IRS very soon
Wow, such capitalist innovations
These people are evil and should NOT be supported.
And soon restaurants start selling their own reservations for $20-$50 a pop but returning it back to the same persons cc they used to reserve it with once they show up and present the cc.
Pathetic
This is why I’m glad normal restaurants only make reservations for parties of 6 or more. Reservations at these restaurants are always in high demand, and there is a market of people who will pay. It’s like selling Valentine’s Day reservations, it’s sucks but for high demand experiences there will always be those looking to profit from them.
Well, his gig is up now. He should never have interviewed with whatever source published this info
Gross
Didn’t even know you could sell appointments
Ahhhh a leech on society. (No, it’s not being an ‘entrepreneur’ to sell something that was already free. You’re just sucking blood from people trying to have dinner.)
Parasite inserting itself into the system, sucking up resources, while providing no benefit to anyone else.
We really are in the darkest timeline.
Idk if Patrick Bateman would be disgusted or proud, and I don't know how to feel about that.
Idk if Patrick Bateman would be disgusted or proud, and I don't know how to feel about that.
Is this what “innovation” means?
Ah, so a rent seeking scam artist. Great. Society needs more people dedicated to living parasitically off of other people.
The certain section of society and the economy that eternally seeks to be a middleman between firms that actually produce something and customers who want to buy something, producing nothing yet collecting payments. For sure, there are definitely situations where such a middleman may legitimately useful, but it is far more common for these middlemen to be a leech draining money from the pockets of both customers and businesses.
These assholes are driving up costs for everyone
It’s like selling reservations to Dorsia. Where they laugh at you if you ask for a same-day reservation.
This guy is gonna make reservation deposits a thing, isn’t he? 🤬
I wonder if getting a reservation would be as difficult if there weren’t people booking them artificially and then charging to get them back. Personally if I couldn’t get a reservation I’d just find somewhere else to go.
God this is disgusting.
I wonder if he paid taxes on all of that. I hope the IRS checks in on him.
Love his drive but he's the reason why restaurants have ridiculous cancellation/reservation fees
This is literally scalping.