Disgruntled employee sabotages rival with 300 fake restaurant bookings

A disgruntled OpenTable employee left several high-end restaurants in a tizzy after creating hundreds of fake online reservations to sabotage a competitor.

Several Chicago restaurants were left perplexed when several of their reservations failed to show up. The ‘bookings’ which came through an OpenTable competitor, Reserve, went on for several months - USA Today reports.

However, the no-shows set alarm bells ringing Valentine’s Day – one of the busiest days for reservations – prompting Reserve to investigate.

They found that it was a revengeful OpenTable employee that made around 300 fake reservations on their app and website. According to Reserve COO, Michael Wesner, the fake bookings affect 45 Chicago restaurants and amounted to 1,200 no-shows. He believes the unnamed workers’ motivation was to ruin Reserve’s reputation with the restaurants, of which some formerly used Open Table.