8 hours ago, gfron1 said:I didn't think it was quite like this one meaning half down, half at cancellation deadline. I thought they were 100% up front.
Yes, they are 100% up-front. I was referring more broadly to the prepaid-ticket system. Their rationale is that it is equivalent of buying a ticket to a concert, a sports event, or similar. No refunds. Their system has undergone refinements/changes over the years.
BTW, they also do dynamic pricing - popular days/times are priced higher. Take a look at the Next ticketing website, for example. The corresponding website for Alinea is not accepting bookings at present, of course, since they are "on tour" and not reopening until next month, I think.
(For example, early on scalping of tickets went on and were being resold on Craig's List for more than $3000+ each. Hue and cry resulted. They publicly warned that if they discovered it had happened with certain tickets those tickets would be summarily canceled and the current ticket-holders therefore denied the meal. The demand at Next was so great that people would hover over their keyboards at "opening time" for sale of tickets and frantically hit refresh repeatedly to try to get in the door on the server. I know, I was one of those - at one time. The entire "period" - in the beginning - would be sold within a minute or two. Then - one tried for tickets on Facebook, which was where the "market" got set up; with Next themselves releasing a few tables for that day, and people would also haunt FB waiting for those. One could transfer tickets, but eventually this needed to be registered with Next. (This was before Alinea adopted the system) But those days are past now, the system changed over the years, the "fever" died down, and now if one goes to the Next website one finds availability for many days/times for March, for example.)
