SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) — A bill on Gov. JB Pritzker's desk could help address reservation fraud for restaurants.
The bipartisan plan would ban third party reservation companies from listing, advertising, promoting, or selling reservations without written agreements with restaurants.
Any person who violates the ban could face a civil penalty of up to $1,000 for each violation. Customers would also have the ability to sue companies for listing fraudulent reservations online.
"They will post their reservations on a platform like OpenTable or Resy, which they have a third party agreement with," said Rep. Margaret Croke (D-Chicago). "Then, another service will go and take all of those reservations with a bot and sell those on a third party."
Croke said she has seen some reservations resold at prices as high as $700.
House Bill 2456 passed unanimously out of both chambers this spring.
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