This is one aspect not addressed in the article; just because tables were falsely reserved, doesn't mean they were actually responsible for the lack of business - if no customers were going to show up anyway. No real way to ever gauge that though.
I've been to the same restaurant on other nights and it's always been packed, so it was quite suspicious that it was so empty on what should be an even busier night...
Why isn't this a thing already, just like hotels, pre-authorize a minimum table charge to a debit/credit card (ensure AVS and/or names matches - most CC processors fraud systems provide this info - so you have correct details to blacklist in the event of a chargeback) - infact actually the reservation provider should be handling and swallowing the chargeback risk - they have the aggregated data and taking a big fee for essentially a risk free SaaS.
They probably don't want to raise the bar any more for potential customers: too many hoops and I'll just use the phone instead; it'll take less time to call than type my CC#
The idea would be that they do the same on the phone, it's much easier to type than have someone try to process a CC over the phone 5494 2442 what was that again 5494 242.. etc.. It's almost impossible to secure a hotel without a CC nowadays even for pay on arrival, it will take some first movers but I'd suspect most would follow suit pretty quickly.
I wouldn't put it past SV VCs to throw money at something like that in the name of "disruption", ethics be damned. I can almost picture the founders talking about "changing the world" and "disrupting the restaurant reservation cartels" in interviews.
The point already made in my post was that there is no way of us knowing that many, or even a few customers actually called and couldn't get a table. Evidence is anecdotal.
