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Soon - "Auction Sniper now supports urbanspoon! First 3 reservations are free!" There's something frustrating about reading this. Perhaps its that a technologi

by rndmize 13y ago

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 year, the 4 day tickets apparently sold out in 23 minutes, and the rest within 5 hours. I'm having a hard time imagining how its going to be possible for anyone to get some this coming year without a bot.

seanlinmt 13y ago
One could always use a Captcha to stop bots if it became a problem.
- paolomaffei 13y ago
  A service that solves captcha for you can cost as low as $2/1000 captcha
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - wizzard 13y ago
    Yes, but the services utilize human interaction to solve the captcha and that would almost certainly prevent all the openings from being taken in <1 minute.
    - Fuzzwah 13y ago
      Here's the thing though: you've got two people who are eagerly waiting for the purchase / booking of something to become available. One of them is going to do it all manually. The 2nd person has a bot to do all the form filling in leg work but will manually solve the captcha. Who wins?
      - wizzard 13y ago
        True, but there are multiple openings available. I guess they're probably already executing in parallel though. When I looked earlier the DBC average was 17 seconds... with browser form fillers you could beat that!
- avalaunch 13y ago
  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.
  - FaceKicker 13y ago
    Are all the bot reservations actually made with the intention of a human going to the restaurant? I wouldn't be surprised if some people used these bots just to prevent anyone else from making online reservations and screw with the restaurant/customers. Based on the bot's code [1], it looks like all they ask for is a phone number and an email address. It might be a good idea to at least require a captcha, if not a credit card deposit of a few bucks. [1] https://gist.github.com/diogomonica/6076911 https://gist.github.com/diogomonica/6076911
ultrasaurus 13y ago
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.
- asperous 13y ago
  There's probably a whole market of "notify me when (plane tickets get cheap, apartments look good, tickets go on sale, etc)"
  - robryan 13y ago
    Yeah, that kind of feature is getting built into a lot of price comparison based sites now.
  - AndrewDucker 13y ago
    If Amazon had a notification when product X dropped below price Y then not only would it allow people to track that something was now affordable to them, it would allow Amazon to feed back to manufacturers that they could sell N items if they dropped their price to Y.
    - blawson 13y ago
      Something like this? http://camelcamelcamel.com http://camelcamelcamel.com :)
    - namdnay 13y ago
      Isn't there a risk that this type of notification would break the market segmentation that they're aiming for? If you make discounts too easy, maybe you'll start pulling in people who would have paid the full price.
    - shrikant 13y ago
      I work for an online retailer, and every once in a while, we get an email from a customer asking if we could add a feature on the website to notify them when prices drop on items. Maybe we should start trial runs of this feature..
spellboots 13y ago
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 out in 23 minutes but still sell all their tickets before the show. Or either business should increase their capacity. Or perhaps they are capitalising on the fact that they are oversubscribed as some kind of marketing device. Either way, any time there is a limited supply of something people are going to figure out ways to get some, and if the limited supply is available on the web, people who understand the web will have an advantage.
- BurritoAlPastor 13y ago
  "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, because a great $20 dinner that costs $40 will reduce the perceived quality of the restaurant.
  - ronaldx 13y ago
    The result of pricing too low for demand is ticket touting, e.g.: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/pax-tickets http://www.ebay.com/bhp/pax-tickets
  - Erwin 13y ago
    There's this thing here in Copenhagen: http://www.goldentable.com/restaurants-copenhagen/ http://www.goldentable.com/restaurants-copenhagen/ A number of top restaurants (otherwise booked, on a Saturday night, for 2 weeks) auction off a single table, where 50% of the proceeds go to the restaurant, and the rest to a foundation for gastronomical research. Another approach is to require a credit card and charge almost the price of a full dinner if you don't show up. The 41 in Barcelona goes one step further and makes you pre-purchase the entire meal. Some guests will spend another $300 on an expensive bottle of wine. I think it's fine to let some people pay extra in advance to be guaranteed to get a table.

by rndmize 13y ago

seanlinmt 13y ago

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

paolomaffei 13y ago
A service that solves captcha for you can cost as low as $2/1000 captcha
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- wizzard 13y ago
  Yes, but the services utilize human interaction to solve the captcha and that would almost certainly prevent all the openings from being taken in <1 minute.
  - Fuzzwah 13y ago
    Here's the thing though: you've got two people who are eagerly waiting for the purchase / booking of something to become available. One of them is going to do it all manually. The 2nd person has a bot to do all the form filling in leg work but will manually solve the captcha. Who wins?
    - wizzard 13y ago
      True, but there are multiple openings available. I guess they're probably already executing in parallel though. When I looked earlier the DBC average was 17 seconds... with browser form fillers you could beat that!
avalaunch 13y ago
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.
- FaceKicker 13y ago
  Are all the bot reservations actually made with the intention of a human going to the restaurant? I wouldn't be surprised if some people used these bots just to prevent anyone else from making online reservations and screw with the restaurant/customers. Based on the bot's code [1], it looks like all they ask for is a phone number and an email address. It might be a good idea to at least require a captcha, if not a credit card deposit of a few bucks. [1] https://gist.github.com/diogomonica/6076911 https://gist.github.com/diogomonica/6076911

ultrasaurus 13y ago

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.

asperous 13y ago
There's probably a whole market of "notify me when (plane tickets get cheap, apartments look good, tickets go on sale, etc)"
- robryan 13y ago
  Yeah, that kind of feature is getting built into a lot of price comparison based sites now.
- AndrewDucker 13y ago
  If Amazon had a notification when product X dropped below price Y then not only would it allow people to track that something was now affordable to them, it would allow Amazon to feed back to manufacturers that they could sell N items if they dropped their price to Y.
  - blawson 13y ago
    Something like this? http://camelcamelcamel.com http://camelcamelcamel.com :)
  - namdnay 13y ago
    Isn't there a risk that this type of notification would break the market segmentation that they're aiming for? If you make discounts too easy, maybe you'll start pulling in people who would have paid the full price.
  - shrikant 13y ago
    I work for an online retailer, and every once in a while, we get an email from a customer asking if we could add a feature on the website to notify them when prices drop on items. Maybe we should start trial runs of this feature..

spellboots 13y ago

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 out in 23 minutes but still sell all their tickets before the show. Or either business should increase their capacity. Or perhaps they are capitalising on the fact that they are oversubscribed as some kind of marketing device. Either way, any time there is a limited supply of something people are going to figure out ways to get some, and if the limited supply is available on the web, people who understand the web will have an advantage.

BurritoAlPastor 13y ago
"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, because a great $20 dinner that costs $40 will reduce the perceived quality of the restaurant.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  The result of pricing too low for demand is ticket touting, e.g.: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/pax-tickets http://www.ebay.com/bhp/pax-tickets
- Erwin 13y ago
  There's this thing here in Copenhagen: http://www.goldentable.com/restaurants-copenhagen/ http://www.goldentable.com/restaurants-copenhagen/ A number of top restaurants (otherwise booked, on a Saturday night, for 2 weeks) auction off a single table, where 50% of the proceeds go to the restaurant, and the rest to a foundation for gastronomical research. Another approach is to require a credit card and charge almost the price of a full dinner if you don't show up. The 41 in Barcelona goes one step further and makes you pre-purchase the entire meal. Some guests will spend another $300 on an expensive bottle of wine. I think it's fine to let some people pay extra in advance to be guaranteed to get a table.