Thursday, October 11, 2007

Restaurant.complaints

So I bought a $25 gift certificate from restaurant.com for only $5.
Great deal, just spend $35 on dinner and get $25 off.

But the local restaurant (Angelina's) would NOT accept the
certificate. No problem, the owner was a nice guy and explained that
if I emailed the website I would get my money back.

Long story short, I am now the owner of 2 new $25 gift certificates.
It's $25 for the certificate that was not accepted, PLUS an extra $25
certificate.

So why am I complaining?

#1 It's been 3 days since I contacted restaurant.com and they are
still falsely advertising gift certificates to Angelina's. WTF!?

#2 Angelina's owner says that he contacted restaurant.com in July
and opted out of the program. If true, then restaurant.com has been
selling useless gift certificates for 3 months.

#3 When I redeem the new gift certificates, that will be $25 out of a
local restauranteur's pocket... Just to make me happy about
restaurant.com's mistake. Not feeling good about that.

/complaint

The silver lining is that I enjoyed my meal. And I'll go back to
Angelina's Philippine Cuisine again.

If you like good food and service, please give Angelina's a try.
They serve inexpensive Philippine cuisine and have a nice family
atmosphere. Angelina's is located at 3600 Minnesota Dr. Anchorage, AK. On the web: http://www.angelinasphilcuisine.com/

For the record, here's the customer service response from restaurant.com:

Hello,

I have sent you a credit to our website for the certificate(s) that you could not use. You will receive an e-mail explaining how to use this. Thank you and we apologize for the inconvenience. I have also sent you a free $25 certificate for the inconvenience.

We have a no cash back policy stated in our terms and condition which you agreed to when you ordered the certificates. Sometimes restaurants do go out of business/obtain new owners/opt out of our program and we can not help that situation. The restaurants do not inform us of this, and we find out from the customers. When we do find out about it however, we do fix the situation as soon as we can to avoid more certificates sold. We do email customers who have certificates for the restaurant and inform them as well as offer them an exchange for credit to our site.

The credit that you received does not expire and if you do not have anything in your local area you would like, we have online partners at the bottom of our site that you could use the credit for, as well as we are nationwide and you can use it if you go on a vacation somewhere in the United States.

Lisa Frazier
Customer Support
800-979-8985
1500 Shure Drive
Arlington Heights, IL
Please tell my boss how I am doing by emailing:
myboss@restaurant.com

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