The website is unreadable on a mobile device. I can't zoom out.
Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
101–110 of 167 posts
Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
#102Site renders horribly on an ipad
Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Restaurants don't scale linearly.
McDonalds.
Sorry. Restaurants serving food fit for human consumption don't scale.
You essentially need a completely new staff--including a completely new creative staff. This is important, and a large part of why most chefs who own multiple restaurants generally have fairly diverse properties that present different menus. But diversification still requires wheelbarrows of money; "the fastest way to make half a million dollars is to start a restaurant with a million" probably applies even more acutely to opening more than one.
Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
...or adapt the site so it's not bot friendly instead of raising prices just to punish people.
Raising prices isn't just punishing people - it also increases supply, since if PAX would gain double revenue then it would incentivize both PAX to obtain larger facilities, and others to make more similar conventions more often so that more of people who want to go can actually do so.
Except that PAX is a community event and you don't trash your community by pricing its members out. Not if you're human, anyway.
Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where I work (PagerDuty), we follow up with everyone who cancels -- my favourite was "I only signed up to be alerted by a script as soon as PAX tickets went on sale" He got them.
There's probably a whole market of "notify me when (plane tickets get cheap, apartments look good, tickets go on sale, etc)"
I think this site is similar to what your describing: https://trackif.com/
Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Raising prices isn't just punishing people - it also increases supply, since if PAX would gain double revenue then it would incentivize both PAX to obtain larger facilities, and others to make more similar conventions more often so that more of people who want to go can actually do so.
But the result of more people going is a side effect of raising prices; it shouldn't be the main reason. In fact if anything, prices are usually raised to decrease the number of people who pay out for it (ie exclusivity). The issue here is bots, so the solution should be to make such reservation / booking sites unfriendly to bots. Then the event organisers / restaurants can choose to adjust their prices based on the…
The issue here isn't bots, the issue is that there are a lot of people who want to go, and they can't decide which ones will stay home (as there isn't enough space for all of them). You need to decide on some kind of system to decide who will get to come.
You can draw randomly, you can determine who you want to come and invite them, or you can determine who want it the most by asking them to pony up a lot of resources - money or waitingtime (live queues) or effort. It's your choice, unless you refuse to decide, and let scalpers/botwriters decide for you and take everyones money for that.
Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, in todays technological society, people who understand technology have advantages. I don't see why that is surprising, given the website you're commenting on. Ultimately this is not about technology, it's about economics. Surely the restaurant should raise their prices until not enough people want to book 2 months in advance to make bots and make this an issue. Or PAX should raise their prices so they don't sell…
Funny how the rational, clear-headed solution to economic problems always turns out to be "fuck poor people."
In order to determine who wants X the most, you have to ask credible commitments. Getting up at 4AM to make a booking when it becomes available; or waiting in a three-hour queue; or spending time writing a bot is just as significant commitment as paying some extra dollars, so all of those will work to allocate the scarce thing.
But there is a major difference - if you spend three hours in a queue, you lost those hours and noone gained from that. If you spend three hours writing a sniping bot, noone really needs it. But instead if you spend those extra three hours even sweeping streets at minimum wage, and pay that extra money for more expensive tickets - then the seller has gained extra money, which (on scale) increases supply and the world has gained some useful work.
Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
#108[deleted]
Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, in todays technological society, people who understand technology have advantages. I don't see why that is surprising, given the website you're commenting on. Ultimately this is not about technology, it's about economics. Surely the restaurant should raise their prices until not enough people want to book 2 months in advance to make bots and make this an issue. Or PAX should raise their prices so they don't sell…
"Just raise the price" is an appropriate response to demand for a commodity, but it's an inappropriate response to these scenarios. For example: PAX is trying to build a community event. The target demographic is not "wealthy people who love games", it's "people who love games" Changing the price results in a different convention. Similarly, a popular $20 restaurant can't double their prices to keep demand manageable…
I don't understand why the solution, at least in PAX's case, is not to ban bots. That would open up purchasing to regular human users, and since PAX is a ridiculously popular event, tickets would still sell out.
Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
#110In London, a "no reservations" system seems to be happening more and more with popular trendy/hip establishments. And it seems to work. Places like Burger & Lobster or Meat Liquor usually have very long queues at prime times.
Does anybody but the establishment really prefer such a system though? Setting aside time in my evening itinerary for queueing is not my idea of ideal. Probably only a matter of time until a side-business of people who are willing to wait in lines for you emerges.
As a customer it can definitely be annoying to experience at times. My tolerance seems to vary depending on the wait times and food expectations.
A perceived upshot is that the restaurant must put an emphasis on quality at reasonable prices, otherwise they won't draw those crowds and I'm definitely not going to wait for a crappy meal.
However, the "no reservation" method itself seems to help draw crowds too. Kind of like the lines outside a night club seem to draw people. Throw in a bit of edgy branding with some cool marketing and it pulls well - having an "image" works.
Queuing is a bit of a cultural thing/expectation over here. Having someone cut in line can be a huge no no. If someone bought their way into the queue, I could very well see it causing some highly vocal responses. But I'm sure there are people out there trying it out.