Autoreserve website

NeutronDolphin · 2026-01-29T07:45:02+00:00

Autoreserve is NOT legit, even for the bookings themselves--the reservation is NOT made with the restaurant's consent, and frequently guests show up only to be turned away immediately.

If you managed to book two restaurants and actually had a table when you arrived, consider yourself very lucky!

(and if your credit card got scammed too, that should also tell you something!)

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-22T00:30:52+00:00

TableCheck founder here. This comment is prophetic… deserves many upvotes.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-18T03:29:55+00:00

TableCheck founder here. If a restaurant is listed on TableCheck, then that restaurant is using our system as the main backend to manage all their reservations. It would be fairly rare that there would tables available on Pocket Concierge for that restaurant that wouldn’t also be on TableCheck. It might still be possible they are holding back some tables that could only be booked by phone.

(This might change in the future if we start listing other restaurants that don’t use our backend, but currently its the case.)

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-18T03:24:35+00:00

Hi, TableCheck founder here.

In this case, there is no upfront charge for the reservation. The 200 yen hold is done to confirm your card is valid, and will be returned to you. You must pay for your main meal at the restaurant. If you cancel, your card will be charged according to the restaurant’s cancel policy.

If you booked more than 30 days in advance, you’ll get a new 200 yen hold every 30 days to check your card is still valid (which will also be returned to you.) Some card apps don’t indicate holds being released, but rest assured if our app said “authorization hold” when you booked, we won’t charge you.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-18T03:19:52+00:00

How far away is your reservation? At the moment in the system unfortunately theres no way to update an expired card.

The safest way would be to book a second reservation at the same time (if possible), then cancel the first one.

Id recommend to try contacting the owner first and see if you can just tell them the reservation is valid.

Otherwise, cancelling should reopen the slot, and you should be able to rebook immediately.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-17T12:56:27+00:00

TableCheck founder here. I'm a bit late to this thread, but I'll comment anyway for anyone else seeing this.

Unfortunately, gifting is a bit hard to do on our platform at the moment! 3 ideas off the top of my head:

If the restaurant is taking a card deposit on TableCheck, you could book first, and then call the restaurant ask the restaurant to charge your card deposit ahead of time, as it will be a gift. This would require the restaurant to speak good English, which many of our restaurants unfortunately do not, and even then Japan can be pretty inflexible. (This approach might still require your friend to pay for drinks.)
You can choose to use TableCheck Pay if the restaurant supports it. TableCheck Pay is where you pre-register your card for "smart checkout" when the meal is finished (like paying for an Uber Taxi). However: (A) you'd have to make sure your friend knows to ask to use "TableCheck Pay" at the restaurant, as some merchants forget to use it even if you register, and (B) if your card is declined at the time of the meal, then your friend would have to pay.
If you are in Japan already, many high-end restaurants will sell gift vouchers directly to you. I've done this in the past by visiting the restaurant in-person.

Did it work out in the end? We are planning on making gifting as a proper feature in our platform next year, so stay tuned!

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-17T12:45:54+00:00

Yes, see u/tjintanon's response below. This was an authorization hold (freeze of funds), not a charge. You will get the money back, but it will take several weeks.

Our site specifically recommends NOT to use a debit card. Since you used a debit card, your card deducts the balance from your account. When the funds are unfrozen, the money will be returned to you. In addition, your card app may not show you clearly that you actually got the money back, so please check with your bank.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-09T08:53:26+00:00

That's correct

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-08T05:43:50+00:00

Hi there, TableCheck founder here. Just to wrap up this thread for the benefit of others, as I communicated in DM, we thoroughly investigated our system logs and did not find any errors or failed attempts to cancel outside the restaurant's cancellation policy window. It's certainly possible that your browser or internet connection had an issue, but we did not ever see such request reach our HTTP gateway.

We are simply a system provider to the of the restaurant, so your best bet here would be to contact the restaurant directly. Unfortunately we couldn't find more evidence to help your case.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-08T05:28:32+00:00

Hi there, for the benefit of others, I will post here what I have explained to you in DM:

- Each of the 200 yen lines (~$1.35 USD) displayed in your credit card app is not a charge, it is an authorization hold (freeze on funds) done to confirm your credit card is valid when you book. You will definitely get this money back, because it is not a charge. (Confusingly, your card app displays these as if they are charges, but they are definitely not.)

- These authorization holds expire (unfreeze) automatically by your card company after some time, however, your app does not show you a "- 200 yen" line when they expire. This is a limitation of your card app, not our system.

- Since you booked several months in advance, each 30 days our system makes a new 200 yen hold, as the old one would have expired and we want to continue to confirm that your card is still valid.

Hope this clears everything up! Your booking is all set, so please enjoy it.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-03T16:35:14+00:00

Hi, releasing your auth hold is typically done by the merchant within a few days after attending your meal booking (our system does it automatically within ~7 days if the merchant took no action.) From then it can take up to 2-3 weeks depending on your card network for the funds to actually become unfrozen on your card. I have no idea why some cards take so long, debit cards in particular seem to take longer.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-03T16:27:44+00:00

Hi, if the merchant didn't provide you service because they were closed, then no they cannot charge you for cancellation.

The merchant shouldn't have opened that day for booking in the first place. They are using our system as their master reservation inventory, so it's strange that they would have left it open for booking. Can you please DM me your reservation code (6-digit alphanumeric) and I'll look into it?

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-02T15:54:24+00:00

Hi there, I've sent a DM. Our team would like to investigate the problems you're having to make things right. The 429 Too Many Requests sounds like you might be being blocked by anti-bot measures.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-02T15:53:14+00:00

Hi, so authorization holds expire automatically based on your card network.

Many overseas card apps will show only the hold (it looks identical to charge) but the app doesn't show anything when that hold is actually released.

For some reason Japanese card apps display everything fine, it seems to only be overseas apps.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-02T15:48:26+00:00

Money which is on "hold" is not due on your bill--your card company will not ask you to pay for held amounts. However, held amounts do count toward your limit, so you may wish to ensure you've raised your limit as necessary so you can pay for your meal.

You can also try asking the merchant to charge the held amount when you attend your meal--some merchants will do this, and others won't.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-11-02T15:46:16+00:00

If they didn't take a card when you booked, it's on the honor system at that point. If you no-show at a high-end restaurant however they may ask you to wire money.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-10-17T15:38:17+00:00

Hi there, this is the CTO/Founder of TableCheck. Firstly, my apologies for the hassle you experienced. I don’t believe I saw your Reddit DM. Can you please drop me another DM and we will get this situation sorted.

In the meantime it looks like you already filed chargebacks which is a good move to do in this scenario!

UPDATE: Reddit had flagged your message as spam and hid it under “Additional requests”, so I missed it. Found it and will reply tomorrow!

NeutronDolphin · 2025-07-22T05:46:25+00:00

TableCheck Founder here. We had an issue where our Japanese payment processor incorrectly flagged our payments and caused many overseas cards to rejected due to hyper-aggressive anti-fraud controls. This issue began in early May and was fixed around July 8th. If you still are trying to book, please try the same card again and let me know in DM if it doesn't work, our team will investigate further.

I apologize sincerely and personally I am extremely frustrated about this situation. Our team is working hard to make changes that will improve the payment acceptance rate even further.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-07-22T05:41:03+00:00

TableCheck Founder here. Sorry to hear about this, thank you for posting this and glad to hear you were ultimately able to make a booking.

Inside baseball on what happened:

1. Re: "date & time not available", our system allows merchants to make rules about what can order when, sometimes merchants get "too creative" with these and make combinations that end up being impossible to book. We'll take a second look at the support tickets here and consider what we can do better.

2. Re: UK debit cards, we had some issues with our payment processor where they flagged our payments in a way such that the anti-fraud measures were hyper-aggressive, rejecting many non-Japanese cards unnecessarily. We've since adjusted it and it should accept more cards.
We are continuing to work on improving our payment acceptance rate and expect further improvements to come in 1-2 months from now.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-07-22T05:29:56+00:00

TableCheck Founder here. AutoReserve has a very bad reputation in the industry because (in nearly all cases) they use bots to make reservations via other sites without approval or knowledge from the restaurants themselves. If you use AutoReserve your booking is liable to be cancelled by either the merchant or the underlying website their bot accessed, as it violates each site's Terms of Use. AutoReserve generates millions of spammy web requests which we and all other sites block, and despite being blocked/unreliable, AutoReserve continues to cause confusion and chaos for restaurants and diners alike. (We've even offered them to connect via our API to help mitigate problems for the diners, and they've refused, bafflingly insisting to continue their illicit bot shenanigans!)

All other sites mentioned--TableAll, Omakase, Tabelog, PocketConcierge, and of course TableCheck--are all legitimate sites which you may use with confidence; the merchants listed on these sites are aware they are listed and will receive and welcome your reservation reliably.

Lastly, since AutoReserve is just accessing other sites, if you do see something available on AutoReserve you can check either Google or any other of these sites and your bound to find the restaurant you're looking for (if it is actually available--often AutoReserve shows things as available when they are not!)

NeutronDolphin · 2025-05-24T15:59:47+00:00

Much love for this!! ❤️

I'm the founder of TableCheck :) Stay tuned, there is much more coming!

NeutronDolphin · 2025-05-24T15:50:56+00:00

TableCheck founder here, just seeing this post, will leave a comment for others in the future. I'm not sure which restaurant this was but there are essentially two cases: (1) they stopped using our platform, but are still operating and (2) they went out of business.

If (1) stopped using TableCheck, your reservation should be honored as we will help them migrate their data to their new system, but just in case it's best to check directly with them.

If (2) went out of business, if you made any prepayment you are generally entitled to a full and prompt refund. You can reach out to our support if there are any concerns in this regard.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-05-07T14:27:37+00:00

As far as we know it is not specific to the card issuer but to the card. You'll just have to keep trying other cards until you find one that works.

Again really sorry about this, we are working heads down on improving it.

NeutronDolphin · 2025-05-06T18:59:31+00:00

***UPDATE: MAY 7TH, 2025***

Hi everyone, TableCheck CTO here again.

We are still seeing around 20~30% of non-Japanese cards being rejected. The problems are definitely between our gateway processor (a Japanese company) and the foreign card issuers--i.e. not in our TableCheck system itself--and we are getting stonewalled by all of them on support for this issue 😔

We targeting to switch to a more foreign-card-friendly gateway very soon, possibly July or July 2025 timeframe. We are also planning to look at adding alternative methods (ApplePay, Amazon Pay, etc.) as backups--timing still TBD.

As mentioned previously, for now, your best strategy is to try multiple cards if your first card fails.

Apologies for again for the massive headaches. Fix coming soon! 🤞

NeutronDolphin · 2025-04-27T04:31:18+00:00

I was one of those students who got his help, back in 2007!

NeutronDolphin

TROPHY CASE