Restaurateurs are fighting back against customers who make reservations in advance but fail to show up without giving prior notice.

The issue is especially problematic in the year-end's "bonnenkai" and New Year's "shinnenkai" seasons when many eateries offer feasts.

One day in April, a 43-year-old man who runs a cafe in Tokyo was told over the phone by a customer, "I'm not paying the cancellation fee," despite the person not arriving for a booking made in advance.

The small eatery serves hamburgers as its specialty and can seat just 29 diners on the first and second floors. The customer reserved a full-course meal with a "nomihodai" all-you-can-drink offering for 4,000 yen ($36.50) per person for 10 people via a restaurant search site.

Despite an explanation being posted on the site stating "those who cancel the booking on the appointed day must pay 100 percent of the total," the individual did not appear, and the cafe had been forced to turn away other customers.

The manager then decided to use a cancellation charge recovery service (https://dotakyan.com), which is operated by a lawyer.

When the no-show date, reservation details, contact information for the customer and other data are inputted, a commissioned attorney then demands by phone or e-mail that the wrongdoer pay the fee. While the request for collecting the fee is free, 30 percent of the retrieved fees are paid as a commission.

In the case of the Tokyo cafe, the customer ended up paying the entire penalty fee on the advice of a lawyer.

The operator had previous trouble with no-show individuals, as he did not know the addresses of customers to which he should send a payment demand. As such customers often did not answer the phone when he called the number entered for the reservation, he decided to ask the site for help.

Lawyer Fuyuki Ishizaki, who belongs to the Kanagawa Bar Association, runs the Web page and conducts negotiations with no-show individuals. He started offering the service in spring 2018 after learning that many restaurants tend to give up on trying to recover cancellation fees.

"Eateries face a heavy burden when trying to retrieve cancellation charges on their own," he said. "The presence of a lawyer makes customers realize that restaurants are serious about recovering their losses (resulting from a no-show)."

Ishizaki noted that it is also possible to file a lawsuit for compensation based on requests from the victims if customers refuse to pay the fees.

A similar service (https://noshow.net) was established in Osaka this past summer by Shigeyuki Sowa, a lawyer at the Osaka Bar Association, and others. It has received about 140 collection requests from Osaka, Tokyo, Hiroshima and elsewhere, according to Sowa.

In an increasing number of cases, the same eatery operators repeatedly use the site reportedly because of its user-friendliness.

HUGE LOSS FROM NO-SHOWS

In an online survey conducted by Table Check Inc., a Tokyo-based restaurant booking service provider, in November 2019, 126 respondents said they have not shown up at restaurants they reserved.

Covering 1,112 individuals in their 20s to 60s, the study revealed more than 70 percent of no-show customers are in their 20s to 30s.

While 34.1 percent and 32.5 percent said they “simply made the booking to temporarily secure a place” and “the booking was temporarily made because the restaurant is popular,” respectively, 30.2 percent said they “forgot they made the reservation.”

In 50.8 percent of no-show instances, eatery reservation sites were used.

“Reserving seats temporarily has become easier thanks to online mechanisms, but the easy feature results in many no-show cases,” said a Table Check representative.

Customers not appearing on appointed dates can cause significant damage to restaurants.

According to a report released in November 2018 by an economy ministry expert panel discussing the issue, no-show cases are reported in 1 percent of all reservations at eateries, leading to an estimated annual loss of 200 billion yen.

The report also states that restaurants can demand a penalty equivalent to 100 percent of the total amount when reservations are made for full-course meals, while seat-booking customers need to pay the amount calculated by deducting the ingredient costs from per-customer fee.

The panel pointed out restaurant operators need to specify their cancellation charge rules in advance.

As some people could not contact the eateries or forgot about having made bookings in some no-show instances, the report argues online mechanisms need to be introduced for customers to easily contact them for cancellation and that restaurants should reaffirm the content of reservations.

In line with the move, five online restaurant booking service providers set up a committee on no-show cases so that guidance on countermeasures against the issue can be offered for eatery operators.

The economy ministry supports the effort by taking measures such as providing a subsidy for shops that introduce online systems.