[zaroth]

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 so much.

[avalaunch]

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.

[fusiongyro]

I bet you could cancel a fake reservation one second before making a reservation on behalf of someone else. The effect would be the same as reselling.

Honestly though, I don't understand why this needs to be available over the web in the first place. If your restaurant is that posh, I'm sure you're not going to lose business by making people call in their reservations. You'll still need to have someone answering the phone anyway, so it's not like you're saving money by cutting an employee. Whatever meaningful benefit having an online reservation system might have provided is clearly lost in the absurdity of this situation.

[rorrr2]

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

[dasmoth]

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