However, I do not work in the financial services industry, and thus have two questions for you / Ms. It’s my opinion that we do not need a parental state to legislate how advisors or brokers are permitted to be compensated, for several reasons, the least of which being that the market already seems to be leading individuals toward index funds and fiduciary advisors in droves. Many certified financial planners market the value-add of unbiased advice in their promotional materials (books, radio programs, websites, whitepapers, etc). A financial planner who is paid a flat-fee or based on the percentage of assets under management is said to have interests that are more in line with those of consumers (although perhaps still biased toward over-saving and assets with high risk/return characteristics). These brokers tend to have incentives that are objectively misaligned with customers (e.g., they might recommend the mutual fund or annuity with the highest fees because they earn the largest commissions on such products). I thought this episode was particularly interesting in light of the Department of Labor’s proposed “fiduciary rule”, which is hostile to broker-dealers who earn commissions selling financial products for individuals’ retirement saving goals. Both buyer and seller may prefer a bit of anonymity because they have to rub shoulders after the fact. An insulating middleman offers a protective culturally desirable shield between the buyer and the seller. The buyer doesn’t know for sure if the seller was someone seated on his other side or someone else altogether. Reselling a ticket through StubHub’s or Ticketmaster’s ticket resale options offers a kind of insulating anonymity that reduces social discomfort afterwards.
Awkward! Or, maybe the buyer himself might feel uncomfortable sitting next to someone to whom he has to feel grateful or beholden or with whom he has to make polite chitchat even if neither party wants that beyond the ordinary way you’d nod or say hi to the stranger you are sitting next to for several hours. Even legally these days if you stay within certain price bounds.īut then you end up having to sit next to the buyer–someone who may feel buyer’s remorse and who knows for sure you were the seller. Sure, if that happened, I could sell the ticket at the door: a handwritten sign or a quiet inquiry of buyer-eyed bystanders is a guaranteed way to scalp a ticket to a hot show. I recently had four tickets to a sold-out Broadway show, but we were stuck with a chance that one of my companions might have a last-minute conflict. StubHub, for example, provides exactly that insulation between buyers and sellers. Another 50 minutes of lost capacity.Īnother aspect of the interesting insulator role is that sometimes anonymity between the parties is desired by one or both sides for completely legitimate reasons. They might leave after 100 minutes, but you can’t seat anyone at that table if it is reserved from 8:30. Then suppose that it’s a big party, so you set aside 150 minutes for the reservation. So that table will be without guests for those 20 minutes. There’s a reservation for 6pm for just the size of table opened up, and it looks like nobody from a compatible table will leave before 6.
The middleman episodes full#
For example, imagine a restaurant is full and a patron leaves at 5:40pm.
Places with a high percentage of reservations will have a problem because they have capacity loss due to the fact that reservations are inflexible. And that’s assuming that the restaurant is full otherwise there’s nothing lost. Assuming that the average time that a customer is at the table is 80-120 minutes (high end place) that’s only 20% of capacity lost. Are no-shows such a big deal as this podcast suggested ? I’d assume that after 20 minutes you can cancel the reservation.
I’d like to hear the opinion on reservation from somebody in the restaurant business. The wedding planner can get a kickback from its vendors, so she won’t necessarily use the option that’s best for her customers. It’s true that being a return customer, a wedding planner has more leverage on a florist than the bride/groom, but that’s just putting all their eggs in one basket because hopefully they are not going to be return customers with the wedding planner.
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