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Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

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Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

#41

Post by ultrasaurus »

rndmize wrote: post #3

Soon - "Auction Sniper now supports urbanspoon! First 3 reservations are free!" There's something frustrating about reading this. Perhaps its that a technological advancement that was supposed to make life easier is being capitalized on by a small group of technically competent people, shutting out the average user. I was thinking of going to PAX next year a few hours ago and decided to do a bit of research. For this…

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.

Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

#42

Post by xentronium »

mozboz wrote: post #38

I'd suggest that this effect is a somewhat superficial expression of the deeply rooted problem of people in urban situations broadly losing their personal connections with their own expressions of creativity and art, primarily through doing work that they are not engaged with in a deep, meaningful sense. Perhaps: - People in certain modern, urban situations crave certain types of creative expression that seem to be v…

Wrong thread?

Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

#43

Post by dasmoth »

rorrr2 wrote: post #39
zaroth wrote: post #28

Since you can't RESELL your reservation, I think the answer is for the restaurant to black list exactly one sniper, maybe just for one year, and publicize doing so. Everyone else, who has been fighting to get a reservation for months the old fashion way, will not decry your loss. And I doubt very much you would risk getting blacklisted for sniping reservations off their site, since you appear to love the restaurant s…

If you can't resell your reservation, then what's the point of the bots?

Some of the bot-herders probably just want to eat there themselves. After all, the author wrote his bot because he wanted a table.

Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

#44

Post by asperous »

icebraining wrote: post #11
tome wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed this I do not understand, nor do I understand why bands sell tickets so cheaply when they can be resold by touts outside the door for many times that price.

Kid Rock is tired of scalpers taking tickets away from his biggest fans. One way to stop that: Raise ticket prices. If Kid Rock charged more for his tickets, scalpers wouldn't be able to sell them at such a big markup. But Kid Rock doesn't want to raise prices. "I don't want to break you by coming to see me, " he says. "I want to make as much money as I can, but I don't need to drive around in a tinted down Rolls-Roy…

Having to show your id and the credit card you used to buy the tickets makes the most sense to me.

http://www.ticketmaster.com/creditcardentry

Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

#45

Post by asperous »

ultrasaurus wrote: post #41
rndmize wrote: post #3

Soon - "Auction Sniper now supports urbanspoon! First 3 reservations are free!" There's something frustrating about reading this. Perhaps its that a technological advancement that was supposed to make life easier is being capitalized on by a small group of technically competent people, shutting out the average user. I was thinking of going to PAX next year a few hours ago and decided to do a bit of research. For this…

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)"

Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

#46

Post by avalaunch »

seanlinmt wrote: post #35
rndmize wrote: post #3

Soon - "Auction Sniper now supports urbanspoon! First 3 reservations are free!" There's something frustrating about reading this. Perhaps its that a technological advancement that was supposed to make life easier is being capitalized on by a small group of technically competent people, shutting out the average user. I was thinking of going to PAX next year a few hours ago and decided to do a bit of research. For this…

One could always use a Captcha to stop bots if it became a problem.

But it's not a problem for the places taking the reservations. They're thrilled whenever they manage to book solid. It's only a problem for the non technically minded people looking for reservations.

Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

#47

Post by avalaunch »

zaroth wrote: post #28

Since you can't RESELL your reservation, I think the answer is for the restaurant to black list exactly one sniper, maybe just for one year, and publicize doing so. Everyone else, who has been fighting to get a reservation for months the old fashion way, will not decry your loss. And I doubt very much you would risk getting blacklisted for sniping reservations off their site, since you appear to love the restaurant s…

What am I missing? Why would the restaurants care? Do they prefer non snipers eating there as opposed to snipers? Won't they just be happy to be booked solid regardless of who the bookings are with? I just don't see how this is a problem for the restaurants at all.

Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

icebraining wrote: post #11
tome wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed this I do not understand, nor do I understand why bands sell tickets so cheaply when they can be resold by touts outside the door for many times that price.

Kid Rock is tired of scalpers taking tickets away from his biggest fans. One way to stop that: Raise ticket prices. If Kid Rock charged more for his tickets, scalpers wouldn't be able to sell them at such a big markup. But Kid Rock doesn't want to raise prices. "I don't want to break you by coming to see me, " he says. "I want to make as much money as I can, but I don't need to drive around in a tinted down Rolls-Roy…

I'll leave inviting the Market Economics Fairy here to Eliezer; I just want to point out, that he won't "break you by coming to him", you just won't come. Instead, someone richer, who can afford the ticket without breaking, will come.

EDIT:

The real ideas of Kid are described not in the quote but in the rest of article; it's worth taking a look at.

Re: Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF

#50

Post by robryan »

asperous wrote: post #45
ultrasaurus wrote: post #41

Earlier 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)"

Yeah, that kind of feature is getting built into a lot of price comparison based sites now.
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