Here's an interesting idea. Yesterday my colleague Chris used these forums to vent his spleen over <a href="http://www.citywire.co.uk/money/restaurants-take-note-you-re-not-up-to-scratch/b449920">restaurants adding a service charge to his bill</a>, and I share his frustrations - but there's one area where we're not charged but should be: reservations.

Economics blogger Seamus McCauley (<a href="http://www.virtualeconomics.co.uk/">virtualeconomics.co.uk</a> - always worth a read) <a href="http://www.virtualeconomics.co.uk/2010/11/eating-opentables-lunch.html">points out</a> that restaurants have historically given away a valuable commodity (tables) for free, robbing themselves of revenue and creating a situation where people can fail to show up without penalty.

In his words: "This was a wearisomely inefficient customer experience, and more to the point the economic surplus the restaurants created by giving potentially valuable reservations away was simply handed over to whoever happened to ring them up first (in other words a combination of people in the know, people with good PAs and lucky idiots - almost pure social waste)."

McCauley suggests restaurants start charging for reservations, but goes further - there should be a secondary market allowing people to sell their reservations via online auction, he says.

On the face of it this all makes perfect sense, and restaurants which typically find themselves overbooked could experiment with it without putting themselves at a disadvantage - so if the idea proved successful it could quickly spread.

But it would make the experience of restaurant booking similar to that of booking planes and hotels - you have to book far in advance to get the best deal and even then you feel anxious that you could have done better. Or worse, you'd have to deal with the restaurant equivalent of ticket touts.

So I'm in two minds. Curious to know what Citywire readers think. And has it been tried before?

I was once in an upmarket restaurant in Oxford and asked for the Moules Marinieres (which were on the menu), the waiter said that they were not available at this time of year as they "go down deep and can't be caught". I replied in a loud voice "what a load of bull***, I was under the impression that Mussels spend their entire life attached to a rock and how did they manage to drag that around the sea bed?". The waiter for my table was changed.

"In the US 10% would be considered a mean tip, so in the UK you are lucky."

Not really as the cost of eating out in the US is less because they barely if at all pay their waiting staff and the cost of food is lower. In UK we have minimum wages etc to contend with.

Thats also why service tends to be better in the US as its a case of "you reap what you sow". If you want to make money give good service and be nice to the customers. We dont have a lot of that in the UK as we dont do service industries well. We all think we can go to Uni and then get a fat salaried job. We dont generally have professional waiters like say the Italians and Portuguese do, and it shows. Ours are college kids or mums earning pin money and getting out in the evenings.

Was this article penned on April 1 but writer forgot to release it from his d(r)aft message box...what next..markets in train ticket reservations, car service reservations, dentist appointments, doctor appointments....could build a whole new " Service" sector in the UK...that will undoubtedly help counter the effects of recesssion